


Copper Star

by orphan_account



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, Fantasy AU, Magic, Peridot Is Bad at Everything, Slow Build, Slow Burn, So much worldbuilding, Worldbuilding, alternative summary: four lesbians go on a magical adventure
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-07
Updated: 2016-05-07
Packaged: 2018-04-29 14:29:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 21,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5131025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"All I have to do is kidnap one of the royal guards and wring from her the information. It's a simple mission, Lapis." </i>
</p><p> </p><p>Naturally, Peridot does everything wrong. Which is an understatement, really, because she's fairly sure that converging with her enemies to embark on an adventure that has the sole purpose of helping the kingdom she wants to see go up in flames is a lot more than <i>"wrong."</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> the epic otp fantasy au that i've been dreaming about writing since i was like twelve all those years ago but never had the commitment and skill required to do so until now: it's finally here and i. am very excited to write this. 
> 
> also shout-out to my bff for putting up with and supporting my constant screaming about my writing, it's appreciated and ily <3

**_ _ **

**_Part One of Three_**   

The thing about fear is that it doesn't have to eat you with its jittery black flames unless you let it.

For example: as of right now, Peridot is trying to tell herself that she is unafraid of her own demise. If she dies, then she dies in a blitz of glory, dies  _heroically,_ even, knowing that she's sacrificed herself in body and soul for the cause of her home.

Lapis has countered in the past that if Peridot dies, she will die of her own arrogance and clumsiness in a way that will cause her second-hand embarrassment to think about long after Peridot is gone.

Lapis has no idea what she's talking about.

The point is that the idealism coursing through her is  _"not afraid not afraid not afraid,"_ a crazed mantra that she wrestles into the foundation of her mind, attempts to consolidate and codify into her mindset. It works, kind of. Works enough so she knows that a couple hours from now she will have brought herself to cultivate the courage required to do what she traveled all the way over here for.

The innards of the cave are bathed in dull, sapphire-esque lighting, a glow that's emitted by the stalactites above them: clear, rough-textured rocks, like salt lamps, that shed blue illumination from the fires that live encased in their bellies. Peridot sits with her legs folded underneath her on the cold, blue-gray stone.

"You're planning on coming back after this, right?" Lapis Lazuli says, propped up on her elbows as she leans out of a crystalline pool, and gravity draws beads of water from her hair and skin to the floor. "Alive?"

"Sure," Peridot replies, brushing one of the species of cave-dwelling beetle that this cavern is infested with off her pants, watching its furry legs scuttle off of her and into a crevice in the wall, where a couple other pairs of glowing antennae poke out and twitch back and forth to greet it. "Whatever."

Lapis' eyes harden. "Peridot."

Peridot wishes desperately that she would stop; wishes desperately that she would stop tugging at the threads Peridot has woven carefully around her courage and determination in order to protect it. They've had this conversation several times. Each time, Peridot becomes less and less sure of herself, weakens the control she has over her detrimental emotions: the anxiety, the pessimism, the self-preservation instinct. She tells herself that it's for her queen, that she should be grateful that she finally has a chance to prove her worth and potential, but she - something has been constantly wavering inside her since they embarked, a flurry of violent, coiling butterflies that punches her in the gut whenever she thinks of actually doing what she's planning on doing. But Lapis can't know that. If Lapis knows that, she will rub salt in the wound and somehow convince Peridot to go home with nothing to show because she's just like that.

"Lazuli," she says. "Do I really have another choice? Tonight is the best night to do it. While they're distracted by Gemstone Matrimony festivities." Gemstone Matrimony: an annual event, one that is cherished worldwide, even if exact dates of celebration vary from kingdom to kingdom. Peridot still vividly remembers being sixteen, her eyes snagging on a green, triangular-cut gemstone that had been embedded in a chunk of meteorite. Remembers the forceful gravitation that had reached out to her and pulled.

"And I get that," Lapis says, "I do. I just. Are you sure you're...ready? It's only the first royal mission you've been on, and there's nothing wrong with thinking that it's a bit too much for you right now. We can still go home. Queen Diamond will understand, and if not, then I'll make her understand." Peridot has heard that spiel so many times that it's difficult not to see through the lie. Lapis won't be able to convince the queen of anything. And if Peridot goes home empty-handed, she will be forced to live a life clouded over in shame and failure.

"Of course I'm ready. Don't be ridiculous." It's a daunting mission, she knows. But Peridot dispels the weak parts of her and fortifies the strong ones, the ones that are confident in her abilities almost to the point of excessive conceit, the ones that are excited, almost, to show off the gifts given to her by the gem her soul was fused to three years ago.

Lapis Lazuli has been ~~Peridot's only~~ Peridot's best friend since they were children, and despite years of bonding, being treated by the castle they live in like siblings, spending the first decade of their lives before they matured into teenagers and then adults cleaved to the hip, a schism seems to have formed between the two of them as of recently. Different paths. Written in the way, for example, Lapis is so unapproving of Peridot's searing desire to complete her mission and bring success reports back to their queen. "Gemstone Matrimony festivities distracting the castle and its capital or not," Lapis is saying now, tapping her pruned fingers on the floor, "have you  _seen_  these guards? You don't stand a chance against some of those girls, Peridot."

"Yes I do," Peridot replies defensively.

Lapis pulls herself out of the limpid pool, and the water evaporates off her in a cloud of steam, leaving her body dry and her hair perfectly manicured as if it hadn't been plastered wetly to her head a few moments prior. "Peridot," she says gently. "I know you're desperate to prove yourself and everything, but this just..."

"Why are you being so  _difficult?_  I mean - you want this too, right? To help the queen triumph over Rose?"

"Honestly?" Lapis says. "I don't know anymore. Don't you think it's a little messed up? Diamond's method of dealing with people who don't agree with her? The fact that she wants to taste a  _child's_ blood on her lips? She's oppressive, Peridot. She isn't good." Her gaze drifts like falling snow to the ground, and one of her hands grips at her other arm, hugging it to her side. "I don't know anymore," she repeats in a sullen murmur. "You know me. You know that I've been loyal. But I'm...growing up, you know?"

"I'm leaving," Peridot says abruptly,  _furious_ all of a sudden, tensions popping inside her _,_ and she refuses to look at Lapis as she stands up and makes her way to the mouth of the cave. The Quartz dynasty's castle and the blinking, festive lights that shimmer around it in the capital lay there there beyond the few miles of forest that their cave is raised above. "Please don't follow me."

"I know I can't stop you," Lapis says, and Peridot grits her teeth and gives in and looks at her over her shoulder. Lapis is zoned out, her eyes fastened on the floor with thoughts churning behind them that Peridot can't discern. "No matter what I do, you're still going to go out there, and you're still going to put your life on the line if it means proving your blind, adoring faith in our queen. Am I wrong?" Peridot shakes her head. "You'll die if it means helping her destroy them. Not because you want to see them destroyed. But because she's everything you've ever known." She glances up now, with a tired half-smile, eyes crinkling at the corners. "You mean a lot to me, Peridot. And act as indifferent as you want, but I know you feel the same way; we may as well be blood. But you're never going to change, are you? I've seen it a thousand times. People like you never change."

The cave is silent.

"Just...be careful. Okay?"

* * *

 

Completely unaware of the drama that has unfurled in a mountainside cave mere miles from the castle, she's laying on the ground, something she would absolutely never be doing if it weren't for the woman laying next to her. She does not like dirt. She does not like bugs. She  _does_ like Rose.

"It's beautiful, Pearl, isn't it?" Rose murmurs, turning her head to look at her. Pearl does not turn her own head to return the gaze. She'd already been staring. "Beautiful, but oh so terrifying. To think that all those stars out there are a mere speck on the full spectrum of the universe. You know, it's unlikely, but I hope I live long enough to see humanity advance into the stars. Wouldn't it be incredible, to see a human walk on the moon or examine our sun from up close?"

"It would be amazing," Pearl agrees, although studying space is an obsolete thing to do when there's a nebula of beauty and grandeur sprawled out on the grass right next to her anyway. A nebula of a woman, a birthed star of a human so able to overwork Pearl's senses, so breathtaking, so overwhelming in the way she makes Pearl's heart pump vanilla extract every time she approaches but  _oh,_ Pearl adores what she does to her. She is perfect in every way, an ideal leader, an ideal lover, an ideal caregiver to her kingdom. Pearl is helplessly in love with her. She is so, utterly, helplessly in love.

The two of them stare at the sky, like a black sheet of construction paper that a toddler has spilled white glitter across, and there is silence, save for the distant sound of Gemstone Matrimony celebrations and festivities (the celebration is sure to carry on well into dawn). They're in the private garden, a very secluded nook of it, that lays just to the east of the castle and is cared for solely by Rose herself. Walls of vines and roses surround them, moonlight gilding the flowers' red hues in silver, and behind them, a grandiose statue of Angel Aura Quartz, Rose's preceeder, safeguards them with her presence.

"Okay," Rose Quartz says, rising, and Pearl's breath is stolen from her when a breeze hushes through the garden and Rose's hair and dress sway within it, "I have things I must attend to, so I should probably be heading back inside. This was nice, though. Spending time with my favorite guard never disappoints, but, oops, don't tell the others I said that." She winks at her and Pearl's heart convulses messily in her rib cage. "While I'm doing that, will you do me a favor and make rounds around the castle's grounds to ensure that there aren't any troublemakers wandering over here from the festival? Honestly, I'm surprised it's been this long into the night and no problems have arisen. We usually at least have toilet paper in our trees by now, you know?"

Pearl stands up as well, armor clinking against itself with the movement, and she takes the sword she'd laid on the grass and sheathes it in the scabbard that rests on her hip. "Of course," she says.

"Excellent. Thank you. Goodnight, Pearl."

Pearl bows onto one knee, and Rose giggles as she takes one of her hands and brushes her lips lovingly across Rose's knuckles. "Goodnight, Rose," Pearl says, smiling up at her.

They depart, and, just as Rose had said, there doesn't appear to be any issues on castle property, an observation that Pearl makes as she roams around its circumference. Normally, there are teenagers plotting out pranks and/or unwatched children shrieking about, but the land is devoid of humanity this year, save for herself. Not that she minds. It only makes her life easier for the night.

Such observations are questioned when Pearl makes her way to the shadow-struck space behind the castle, and she swears she hears something rustle within the undergrowth that marks the end of royal property, and her hand flies to her sword's handle on instinct. She watches the plantlife suspiciously, and something emerges from the brambles and Pearl's sword unsheathes itself before she registers that she's doing it. A deer blinks curiously at her, wings ruffling at its sides, before it turns around and bounds back into the bushes. Pearl exhales and her chest loosens in relief.

Relief vaporizes into the wind when a body presses against her back and warm, metallic fingers clamp over her mouth.

Her body goes very still. Pearl has been trained for situations like this.

"Struggle," a voice says from behind, sensitively close to her ear and so a chill runs through her and Pearl's hair follicles prick up underneath her armor, "and I kill you. Understood?"

"Yes," Pearl says, muffled by the hand over her lips, purposefully making her voice waver in faux fear (mostly faux, anyhow; Pearl rejects the itchy buzz of adrenaline and the fact that her limbs attempt to lock in fright). Allowing the intruder to believe she's in control will inevitably cause her to let her guard down. Only then will Pearl worry about seeking an opportunity to escape and strike.

"Good," the voice says, in a satisfied drawl. Another arm is wound around Pearl's torso like a metal python, and Pearl wonders about its strength, how easily she could be able to wrestle free from it, but decides against experimenting. She's not going to try anything until she can accurately evaluate how dangerous this threat is. "Now, you're going to follow me, and you're not going to give me any trouble. If killing you becomes necessary, I will not hesitate."

Pearl believes her. Underestimating your enemy is the best way to get yourself killed _._ "I understand," she says.

The hand on Pearl's face slides down to grasp her neck, which Pearl understands but she also doesn't, considering that yes, her neck and her head are the only two parts of her not protected by armor, but she doesn't know how effective a hand on the enemy's neck will be in combat without some sort of weapon to inflict the fatal blow with.

The arm around her body disappears. Pearl turns around, slowly, and the palm on her neck loosens to allow the movement, then grips around her jugular again when they come face-to-face. The first thing Pearl notices is the  _hair._ Thick, voluminous blonde hair frames the girl's head, fluffed and teased up into an unruly, vaguely fire-like shape above her. She is Pearl's height, coldly meeting Pearl's eyes from behind bronze goggles with two...green ones? Brown? It's hard to tell in the darkness, though the moon is full, night landscapes visible in ripe moonlight. She looks more like a disgruntled university student than she does an actual threat. And yet Pearl is intimidated anyways because she examines the rest of the girl's body and suddenly the metal pressed against her neck makes _so_  much more sense.

Pearl has done her research on the different species of gems. While they're exceedingly rare in the Quartz Kingdom, she recognizes the key features of a girl who's fused her soul to a peridot's instantly. The one key feature, rather. No other gem works as well with limb enhancers as a peridot does: sleek, bulky metal appendages that encase four limbs from the elbows and knees down, oftentimes making their owner appear taller and bigger than they actually are. Pearl had previously presumed that the hands had been some sort of gauntlets, but she knows now that they had been robotic appendages, and somewhere within that metal arm is an actual, smaller arm, a fleshed-out hand controlling the mechanical one from afar. Pearl catches a glimpse of the green stone nestled in the top of the limb enhancer clutching at her neck and does not dare to move. Women with peridots, when trained correctly, are orchestrators of voltage: living, breathing lightning rods. Death by electrocution is not the way Pearl wants to go.

"Let's see, here," the peridot says, eyes idly skimming up and down Pearl's body, calculating, "armor, hm? Won't do you much good against conduction. And - oh." She reaches for Pearl's scabbard with her free hand, unsheathes the sword, and tosses it onto the ground. "You won't be needing that."

Pearl fights the urge to smile. She has done her research on gemkind. Peridot, clearly, has not.

"Just take me to wherever you're planning on taking me," Pearl says, voice chilled, "and let's get it over with."

Peridot (or, at least, Pearl assumes that her name is Peridot; girls very seldom are able to clutch onto the memories of their first names when they hit sixteen and the day of the Gemstone Matrimony comes and grants them a stone) narrows her eyes at her. "Why aren't you resisting more? Aren't you sworn to loyalty and all that? You're supposed to rather die than betray your precious Quartz Queen, right? I mean,  _honestly._ " She laughs to herself, a thin, nasalized sound. "I knew this would be easy, but you're just pathetic."

 _She's onto you._ Pearl ups her acting and shrouds herself within a mirage of uncertainty and fear, anxiously seesawing her weight from leg to leg, rubbing nervously at one arm. "I know I'm supposed to live my life only for our queen," she says, quietly, like a woman who hears funeral bells tolling, "but now that I've been faced with this, I - I don't want to die."  _You can do it, you can do this, you've always cried so easily, don't let this fail you now -_ She forces tears to prick her eyes, and she sniffles, internally repulsed by the fact that she's been forced to reduce herself to a quailing mess in order for her plan to work, but she swallows her pride down. "I don't want to die," she repeats, in a low, quivering whimper that's followed by a hiccup, and the crocodile tears flow freely down her cheeks, nose starting to run, cheeks flushing. How paradoxical she must look! Rose Quartz's most prized royal guard, adorned in the most elegant armor of the highest quality, sobbing openly, degradingly.

" _Pathetic,"_ Peridot repeats acridly, curling her lip in disgust, which doesn't make it any easier for Pearl to upkeep her charade of terror and mental breakdown, seeing as anger prods at the edge of the crevice she's tucked it neatly inside of. _Soon,_ she tells it gently, and it slinks obediently back inside, not without buzzing a final pulse of vehemence through her in dissatisfaction. "Come with me, guard. Remember: try anything, and I leave you as a fried crisp on the dirt, got it?"

"Y-Yes, ma'am."

Peridot watches her carefully, then releases her neck, choosing instead to grab Pearl's left ( _left,_ thank the Lord) gauntlet-clad wrist. As she starts to tug her along, Pearl lags a foot or two behind her, breath hitching in her throat as the adrenaline comes into bloom inside of her, like slivers of ice in her blood, coiled glaciers in her stomach. This is it. Forcing herself to cry, that had been the easy part.

Peridot walks her along the back wall of the castle, where it's darkest, shadows upon shadows because it blocks the full moon's light, until she swerves suddenly at a ninety-degree angle. She's headed towards the undergrowth, and Pearl notices the arched opening within the brambles; that must have been where she came through. She takes note of Peridot's posture, more lax than it had been before, and where she had been glancing over her shoulder every now and then before, she neglects to do that now. Her guard at least seems to be torn down, hopefully by how unthreatening Pearl has made herself seem. Her opportunity shimmers.

Carefully, watching the back of Peridot's body closely, the coppery glinting of her limb enhancers in the moonlight in particular, she outspreads her right hand, and she feels the ring on her index finger sear into her skin, a pain that's intensive, but she's grown numb to that over the five years that she's had it. Photons formulate in her palm, dancing about each other, multiplying rapidly and arranging themselves into a vague cylindrical shape. From the cylinder sprouts two handles on either side, and a blade shoots up from in between those. The dim light dies out. Pearl clutches the sword tightly in her hand as it becomes a corporeal object.

She calculates  _exactly_ how she's going to do this and says Peridot's name.

Peridot turns around. "What?" she says, annoyed. Pearl smiles when Peridot's eyes land on her sword. "W-Wait,  _what -"_

Pearl wrenches her wrist from Peridot's grasp, digs her fingers into the flesh portion of Peridot's arm to hold her still (not that she really needs to; Peridot is still trying to process what's happening, eyes wide and mouth parted slightly as she stares at Pearl dumbfoundedly, but it's an extra precaution). Her eyes briefly assess Peridot's body, past anatomy classes allowing her to envision the organs inside. She picks the one she wants. Raises her arm and Peridot only realizes and starts squirming away after it's too late.

Her sword slices cleanly into Peridot's intestine, and Pearl watches as Peridot stares down at the impalement, not reacting at first; dazedly looks at the wet, sticky darkness that blooms through her shirt around the blade, and her eyes have glazed over. Her body trembles. Pearl twists her wrist so the broadsword shreds the flesh inside her further, wrenches the blade further inside, and then she slides it out, blood gleaming black on her sword's iron in the silver-brandished darkness. She watches Peridot fall bonelessly to her knees, something that may have disturbed her if she hadn't seen this sight before, so, so many times.

Peridot's body collapses.

It's the last thing Pearl's aware of before there, in the middle of the castle's back property with no liquid anywhere in sight save for the blood guzzling from Peridot's gut, a pressurized jet propulsion of water erupts from nowhere and knocks her off her feet.


	2. Chapter 2

The first thing she feels is a feathery, tickling sensation on her cheek, and when she blinks her eyes open, her gaze is met by two beady black eyes that rest atop violet-iridescent eyestalks. She repels her face away with a grimace, away from the beetle's feelers, raising an arm and pressing the insect into the cave floor until she hears the satisfying  _crack_ of its exoskeleton breaking open. Wings flutter out in a hopeless attempt at escape, but Peridot squeezes it down further, creamy white guts squelching out from around shattered pieces of armor. She wipes her hand on her shirt and pushes the mangled corpse, wet with its own juices, outside her radius.

That's when she becomes aware of bigger, more pressing issues than bugs feeling her up.

The pain, when her brain finally registers it, is  _excruciating,_ boiling in the pit of her stomach, churning raw flesh inside out, and Peridot cries out, hands clenching at her sides, back arching, and Christ, she can't handle it, it just hurts so fucking  _bad -_

"Stop moving, or you're only going to make it worse," someone says, and hands take her by the shoulders and pin her flat against the floor again. Peridot panics until she realizes that it's only Lapis.

She glances down at herself: her shirt has been taken off, the tank top underneath it rolled up to reveal bare skin up to Peridot's breast. Peridot studies the area above her navel and fights the queasiness that rises like bile in her throat; the wound is a dark, nightmarish crimson, the flaps of sliced skin framing it stained with a brighter shade of red; the wound is deep enough to see the inner workings of muscle there, glistening wetly with the moisture of her internal body, textured with shredded flesh and tissues. Her heartbeat picks up at the sight of it all, breath quickening, pain piercing her in places she never -

"Relax," Lapis says. "You're going to be okay."

Lapis is sitting at her side, one hand hovering above Peridot's open wound, waving it over her in circular motions. The other one is raised above her head, palm facing the ceiling, maintaining an orb of water in the air.

"What are you doing?" Peridot asks scratchily. It hurts to talk.

"Shh," Lapis says.

Something cold and volatile prods at the lesion. Peridot watches a thread of water slither into the stab wound, line the walls of the bloody depression, and then seem to disappear, as if absorbed. Lapis makes a plucking motion with her free hand and another thread is drawn from the orb of water, snakes down to Peridot's torso, slinks inside the gore.

It's extremely uncomfortable. To say the least. But she'll take it, considering the fact that as Lapis repeats this maneuver several times, the infernal pain seems to soften, and soften, the amount of fresh air hitting the insides of Peridot where it's not supposed to hit lessening.

"You've had your gem for six years," Peridot says, "and I haven't seen you do anything like this. Is it new? The healing powers?"

"No," Lapis replies. "I'd heard rumors of a fountain in Queen Rose's personal garden. It - seemed ridiculous at first, for a woman to have healing tears that she filled an entire fountain with. But I followed you -"

"- You  _followed_ me? -"

"- And I saw her stab you, before I could get there to help, and you were dying, and I was panicking, and it was the only thing I could think of. The fountain." The orb of water starts to ripple and sluggishly mutate out of shape. Lapis draws in a breath and with that, the surface area smooths out again. "Anyways, you're okay now, and the guard who attacked you should be out for a little while. I took care of that. But we need to get moving, the second you're good to go. I doubt no one noticed a girl flying across the sky with another girl in her arms and the entire contents of their queen's legendary fountain trailing behind her."

Peridot takes a moment to process this. "Why did you follow me?"

"Why are you more caught up about the fact that I followed you than you are about the fact that I saved your life?"

"I...would have found my way out of my predicament. Eventually. Your help was neither wanted nor needed."

Lapis rolls her eyes. "Tell that to the blood that's spilled out on the castle lawn right now."

More water worms inside Peridot's gut, and she squirms uncomfortably. "Are you almost finished with that?" Lapis shakes her head. "Okay. How long until you'll be finished with that?"

"Do me a favor and be quiet. Please. For once in your life. You're messing with my concentration."

Peridot takes a moment (if Lapis healing her correctly takes silence, then she is more than willing to be quiet) to assess the night. She is okay, despite her mistake.

Except she's really _not._

 _You've failed._ The thought stings worse than her pierced intestines. She doesn't have the strength to start dealing with that, not yet, but then suddenly it is there, and it is drowning her and Peridot's chest forcibly constricts, head becoming heavier. She fights it off, but the artillery she has to do that is extremely limited, and so she struggles to fabricate new weapons against it. Analyzing every bit of information she knows, tonight's timeline, the possible futures. Anything that can prosecute it.

Something occurs to her, and being quiet is no longer convenient. "Lapis!" she says. "With any luck, it'll be one of the royal guards who come to get us, right? Seeing as that guard from earlier tonight has the most direct, accurate information on me. A firsthand account."

"It's a possibility, I guess," Lapis says. "What's your point?"

"This could actually work to our advantage. You may have just led another royal guard right  _to_ me."

Lapis pauses in her work to stare at her incredulously. "Don't tell me you're still planning on carrying out your mission."

"Well, I'm not dead, am I? Thanks to you, I have another shot at this." She smiles at the blue-fire stalactites on the ceiling, tendrils of buzzed, icy relief twining around her blood vessels and easing the weight that's plagued her body. "Hurry up and heal me. We have things to prepare for."

Lapis mutters something under her breath.

"What was that?"

"Nothing. I need you to relax again. You're all worked up and it's making your body difficult to work with."

Peridot untenses her body the best she can, but it's difficult to rid herself of the butterflies.

She hasn't failed. She still has another chance.

Somewhere through it all, she falls asleep again, and her wound starts to go numb from Lapis' work.

* * *

 

"That scar's going to be with you forever, but besides that, you're good to go."

Peridot rubs one coppery, mechanical thumb over the scaly white starburst of skin above her navel. Lapis is holding two globes of water above her now, one made of Rose's tears, the other much smaller and tinged with the color of rust: washwater from the final cleaning of Peridot's wound. Lapis waves her fingers and the bloodied water floats to outside the cave; the hand falls limply to her side and the orb bursts, showering onto the trees below.

She gestures to one of the bags in the corner of the cavern. "Can you get an empty bottle from there for me?"

Peridot stands up and expects - well, she doesn't know,  _something,_ her vision obscuring, balance swaying, head throbbing with ache, whatever, but none of the above happens. Her body is clean of pain. She walks to the backpack, removes a hollow, stainless steel water bottle. She tosses it into Lapis' lap. "There you go."

"Thanks," Lapis says, and tries and fails to unscrew its top with one hand. Peridot goes back to her and wordlessly takes it from her hand, opens it, and hands it back; Lapis fashions the remaining sphere of water into a cord of liquid and manipulates it into the bottle. "It won't hurt to take what we can of this stuff with us," she explains, and Peridot nods in agreement. They both stare at the remainder of the fountain, seeing as only a fraction of it could fit inside the bottle. "Maybe you should drink some of this," Lapis says. "It won't hurt for your intestines to absorb it, not after what they've been through."

Peridot's face contorts into a grimace. "I am not," she says, "drinking the water produced by another woman's body. That is disgusting."

"Whatever, it's your choice," Lapis says, and Rose's tears splash into the cave's pool. "Okay. Now that you're all healed up, we have to start packing and getting out of here.  _Now._ "

"Woah, wait, no no no. What about my mission -"

"Are these the girls, Captain?"

Peridot and Lapis Lazuli go frigid, their eyes locking onto each other.

"Yes, that's them." That voice.  _That_ voice. "Seize them. We'll decide what to do with them after."

"Yes, ma'am," several voices reply, too many count. Peridot swallows heavily and turns to look at their sources.

When she had said that she wanted this to happen, she had meant one or two royal guards. Three, max.

The guard, Peridot's failed attempt from earlier tonight, is standing at the entrance to the cave, sword held valiantly with its point facing the floor, eyes hooded in her wrath and in her determination. Behind her is a miniature regiment of seven or eight other women - far too many for Peridot to overpower, even if she were to act upon her plan from a while ago.

Peridot's mouth goes dry and she glances, panicky, at Lapis, who is staring at the ensemble of intruders with an apprehensive facial expression.  _What are we supposed to do?_ she wants to ask, but fear works as an adherent and seals her lips together.  _What are we going to do, we're so outnumbered, and -_

A spot in Lapis' back glows beneath layers of light brown skin. Liquid unfurls from there. The twin shapes they take on hesitantly stretch themselves out and then curl against her back.

The guards behind the captain (Peridot wishes she could figure out her name; she's done research on gems, plenty of it, but she's never heard of swords materializing out of thin air) march forward, and it's insulting, almost, the way they advance with no fear, as if they've already won.

Peridot takes note of her own trembling, the way her hands are drenched in sweat within the safety of her limb enhancers, the static electricity crackling along her skin and making her hair stand on end in the way it does when she's nervous, and she knows that if she were part of that guard, she wouldn't be afraid, either. The sound of armored boots approach and it sounds like the tolling of funeral bells, and the symphony of swords unsheathing, that's her eulogy.

"Lapis," she hisses. "What are we going to do?"

Lapis has disappeared from her side.

A vaguely humanoid blur propels itself above the group of soldiers, and several stumble backwards in surprise, one even trying to stab upwards at it. Lapis' wings unfold, catching a wind, allowing her to sail far from the cave's mouth and out above the expanse of trees below. Away from Peridot. Leaving her here to die alone.

" _Lapis!"_ she yells after her. "What the  _fuck?!"_ Her gaze shoots nervously back to the guards, who are in turn gazing at their captain inquiringly.

"It's of no matter now," the captain says, "there's nothing we can do about it. Just get the peridot."

"N-No, wait," Peridot says, heartbeat frightened and erratic as she creeps backwards, hands splayed out before her, "I-I - uh -"

One of the guards lunges for her with a sword, a maneuver done only so Peridot flings herself back, right into two other guards who have snuck behind her. They both take her by the arms. Peridot growls at them and tries to wrestle free, and the burst of satisfaction she feels when she kicks the guard in front of her in the knee, causing her to drop her sword and crumple to the floor, is quickly snuffed out when the guards behind her tighten their holds, binding her arms together behind her back. Peridot snarls at them, shoulders jerking forward as she attempts to pry her arms free, but it's to no avail.

The woman on the floor recovers quickly and joins the two guards behind Peridot so she can deftly raise her blade to Peridot's throat; Peridot repulses her neck away the best she can, but the guard doesn't like this very much and the edge of her sword knifes into a few layers of Peridot's skin in warning, and she feels a thin, hot trickle of blood slide down her neck.

The next thing she thinks to do is lash out with her leg again - an effective action, in general, when the weight of her metal limbs is combined with laws of momentum - but when Peridot goes to swing her leg, she's met with immobilizing resistance. Vexed, she glances down and sees that overgrowth has taken over her legs' limb enhancers, the stone floor cracked open to allow snakes of thorned vines to emerge and wind around her, binding her feet to the floor. There's a girl in front of her, one arm held out, hand outstretched. A lime-colored stone glitters on a bracelet. A sphene, a manipulator of botany. Behind the sphene, four other guards remain motionless, bodies tensed and ready to leap into action. Behind  _them_ is the captain, who is watching this all happen very carefully, like how a scientist would inspect a chemical reaction. She, too, is poised for combat, though she moves no part of her body.

Peridot has been wholesomely debilitated. Her objective defocuses from physical attempts of escape and taps into internal reserves of magic instead.

Her eyes close as she concentrates, and she ignores the sound of more approaching footsteps and focuses instead on the energy that wells hotly in her arms, stinging and throbbing and whining to be released.

Peridot releases it.

And fucks up royally, of  _course._

Her discharge attack is, in general, meant to radiate outwards from her body, but the inverse occurs; she electrocutes  _herself,_ starting on the outside of her skin and then scalding its way into her core, but her gem does grant her a great resistance to electrocution, and she starts to recover quickly. Not quickly enough so one of the guards at the mouth of the cave doesn't murmur "What's going on with her?" to another when Peridot hisses at the white-hot pain.

 _Why now?_ she internally gripes at her gem.  _Why now, of all times?_ The stone tingles within the limb enhancer, as if laughing at her.

("Spontaneous, cynical little creatures, peridots are," Peridot's mentor had told her once. "You can spend decades bonding with one and even then, it'll disobey you and fuck you up every now and then, just because it can.")

Peridot rights herself and opens her eyes, and the concentration she'd already started to sharpen in another attempt at electrocuting her captors scatters when she becomes startled at the captain's sudden proximity. Her eyes are deadly, the swirls of strawberry-blonde hair that frame her face rustling when a cold but gentle wind pushes into the cavern, swishing trees sounding from outside.

"My name is Pearl," she says. "I believe we've met before."

Pearl. Pearl? Peridot has never heard of a woman granted with a pearl holding a military position. They're more common in...fields of entertainment. Ballet and stuff. Although, now that she thinks about it, a pearl's signature inhuman grace and flexibility, the ability to make the rigid human body flow like liquid, isn't  _un_ helpful in battle.

Peridot meets her gaze as solidly as she can muster. "Go fuck yourself," she seethes, and Pearl laughs in response, without any humor.

"Tell me, Peridot," she says, eyes falling to the diamond insignia that's been sewn just below the collar of Peridot's shirt. "What does Diamond want from us now? Why are you here?"

"As if I'd tell  _you._ "

"It's either you talk now, like this, or you talk under torture. The choice is yours."

This swallows her with a reverberation of panic that eats away at her moxie to meet Queen Diamond's expectations, to not betray any of her intent to the enemy, not under any circumstances. She very much does  _not_ want to be tortured.

She wants to slaughter everyone in this room. She also, sort of, wants to cry.

_Where is Lapis?_

A build-up of electricity in her body, not intentional but rather residual of the maelstrom of fear, fury, and helplessness in the pit of her stomach, breaks open like a dam would, and this time, the discharge courses into its actual target. Peridot feels a splash of triumph and hope, up until the death grips on her arms don't loosen in the slightest.  _How in the -_ She glances over her shoulder, a movement as mild as she can make it so as to not provoke the girl who has the blade to her jugular, and stares at the guards who are making direct contact with her limb enhancers confusedly.

"We've outlined their armor in rubber," Pearl says. "We aren't that thoughtless."

Oh.

Peridot is beginning to think that she has underestimated these people. Slightly.

A distant sound of roaring water approaches then, startling her out of her thoughts. A sound that, despite her ruthless fright, makes Peridot smile. She knows that sound well. The intensity of her emotions hazes over a little.

Peridot waits for it, and waits for it, and then water gushes into the cave, flooding everything. Peridot's captors loosen in surprise, granting Peridot the opportunity to yank her arms free, rip her feet from the vines that wither as their commander is knocked over, and leap towards the oncoming wall of water away from them; she crouches down and the water, as expected, arches and flows over her, encapsulating her in a pocket of air.

Lapis is powerful. It's rare for a person to harmonize as infallibly with a gem as she has.

The water above Peridot's eventually head thins, and then dries entirely, and so Peridot stands up again. Lapis hovers above the trees, wings beating to keep herself there, and both arms are held before her; she's collected the guard in a planet of water, a planet that she draws towards her above the forest and then pushes away from her in the opposite direction with such effort that even from Peridot's vantage point she can see the shaking of her arms. It ruptures somewhere above a distant, distant lake.

The people descend like little ants. Peridot watches them fall and thinks about the hushed murmurs that surround Lapis, constantly, no matter where in their castle she is or where she goes. Some are envious of her. Others are terrified.

Peridot? Peridot is just grateful that she has her for protection.

Lapis alights at the very edge of the cave's opening, one foot touching the floor and then both, wings rolling up into her back until they disappear.

"That was..." Peridot clears her throat. "That was. Appreciated."

Lapis is unresponsive, body still, eyes monochrome and spaced out.

Oh, Christ. Not _this_ again.

Peridot approaches her and closes her hands around both of Lapis' wrists, and Lapis hisses ferally as she does this, trying to pull her wrists away with a string of enflamed threats, but Peridot keeps a hold of her and passes on a small but potent electric shock.

Lapis gasps, her body shuddering, and she blinks rapidly. Peridot is relieved to see the glassy, pupil-less gossamer that had glazed over her eyes clear.

"...Peridot?" she says. And then she passes out.

Lapis is powerful. But she's human, too.

As for the reflective enamel over her eyes, well. No one's ever really been able to figure out why that happens, only that it happens when Lapis dips too deep into the power that she's capable of. That gloss does things to her; turns her into a bitter, violent being. But it's easy to snap her out of it. Usually.

Peridot doesn't know what to do with her, so she leaves her there on the floor, not wanting to mess with her. She'll wake up soon anyhow. She turns around.

Pearl is there.

She isn't threatening like this, keeled over the floor, droplets of water that glow blue with the stalactites' illuminations embellishing the smooth surfaces of her armor, hair flattened in its soaked state. Her body trembles every time she hacks up another mouthful of water from her lungs.

Peridot stares at her like a child would stare at a dropped piece of candy on the ground, one that's still wrapped and waiting to be opened.

She dashes to one of the bags in the corner of the room - Lapis has spared them, too - and removes three metal orbs, each about the size of a human head, and sets them on the ground. She lifts one arm, and a series of  _chk-chk-chk_ sounds chirp from the limb enhancer. In response, the orbs roll around on the floor a bit before standing on the little rod-like legs, four each, that pop out from underneath them.

Peridot points wordlessly at Pearl.  _Chk-chkchkchk-chk._

The robonoids waddle towards the hunched figure on the floor. Pearl is trying to stand now, and though she's shivering, she does succeed. One robonoid circles her feet before she takes notice of it, expelling a pale turquoise gel from an orifice on its underside and icing her feet.

"What in the -" Pearl tries to move and is met with the same results Peridot had had while trying to liberate herself of the sphene's vines. The gel has hardened quickly, as it's designed to, and now the other two robonoids are crawling up the cave walls on either side of her; they flip their bodies upside down, so the holes are facing her, more of the gel jetting forth from them and colliding with Pearl's hands, consuming them. They work the lines of goo like a spider would work the silk of its web, scaling further up the walls so Pearl's arms are dragged above her head. Pearl makes a disgusted, confused sound, then slides her hands out of her gauntlets so her arms are free again. The robonoids turn curiously to Peridot, awaiting another command.

_Chk._

Razors slice across their orifices, severing the ropes of gel, and the robonoids repeat the prior process; this time, Pearl has no means of freeing herself of the substance that swallows her hands and lugs her arms upward, and it looks odd, her thick, armored arms cutting off to reveal ghost-pale, birdlike wrists.

Pearl is incarcerated.

Peridot has done it. She has successfully, irrevocably captured a royal guard - the  _captain_ of them, of all things! She walks in front of her, taking her time (Pearl's not going anywhere, after all).

"My name is Peridot," she says, smirking. "I believe we've met before."


	3. Chapter 3

"They'll come back," Pearl says. "Whatever it is that she did to them - they'll come back and get me."

"Perhaps. But until then, you're mine."

Peridot, for the hundredth time, watches Pearl attempt to wrestle free from her bonds. And Pearl, for the hundredth time, succeeds only in flushing her face with red as she pours liters upon liters of effort, to no avail.

The robonoids are an invention engineered by Peridot and her mentor; they'd started working on them some year or two after Peridot had received her gem and John had taken her under his wing, and when they published their designs, they were an instant success, even as prototypes. Pearl is staring at them now with no comprehension. The Quartz Kingdom is rich in people blessed with powerful magic, but the Diamond Kingdom is proficient in technology that the Quartz dynasty's people don't understand.

"For both your sake and mine," Peridot says, "let's hope that you'll make this easy for me." She takes a step forward, arms held behind her back, and analyzes her: Pearl's eyes are dark and clouded over in a storm, more gray than the distinguished bright blue Peridot remembers taking note of from their first encounter. They dart from Peridot to the robonoids to outside the cave, rinse and repeat, fluttery and frightened and erratic like songbirds. Her pinkish-orange hair forms bangs over her eyes as it dries in mussed, awkward angles. The gel around her hands and feet has hardened into durable, crystalline columns that stretch from her hands to the orifices of the robonoids that cling to the walls like bulbous metal arachnids.

"Tell me where the heir is," Peridot says.

"The  _heir?_ Is that what you're here for?"

"Are you so surprised?"

"I'm not surprised. But if you think I'm betraying anything on Rose's child to the likes of you, then I'm afraid you're terribly mistaken," Pearl says. "My loyalty to her is sworn. Torture me, kill me, it makes no difference. I'm not talking." Her facial expression has been drawn into one of - Peridot doesn't know how to describe it, actually. There's a hallway in Queen Diamond's castle, a simple, well-lit corridor with red velvet carpet, and portraits of past rulers and past significant figures of their land grace the walls. Peridot has walked through that hallway several times (it's the quickest route to get to the dining room from her bedroom), and every time she does, despite the quantity of the times she's seen these paintings, she becomes intoxicated by a sense of power and inspiration. The people are portrayed in such a raw, potent way, their portraits capturing the awe-inspiring dominion on their faces so flawlessly that it's as if waves of energy roll off them, like the space around a wildfire. That's what Pearl looks like now, powerful and vehemence-driven.

She would actually look rather fearsome, if she weren't harmless in her current state. Peridot bakes under the temperature of her gaze, even then.

"Oh, no," Peridot says, not allowing this to shake her. "I think you'll find that I can be very...convincing."

Pearl's eyes sharpen further. "Try me."

Peridot is stalling. She doesn't know how to be convincing at all, actually; she grew up being treated like a noblewoman without ever having to carry the responsibilities of one; she's never  _needed_ to be good at convincing people to get what she wants. Her mind stirs to come up with some witty response, something that will buy her more time to think about how she's going to get any information out of this girl, but she comes up blank.

"Uh," she says, "like, um -"

_The Diamond Kingdom is proficient in technology that the Quartz dynasty's people don't understand._

Then, finally, she has an idea.

 _I would like to request something of you,_ she tells her gem.  _Please, just this once, consider respecting it._ Peridot's gem is unreactive for several moments and then blinks with green light, accompanied by a mild sizzling sensation in Peridot's arm. It has acknowledged her, sapping up the gratitude that Peridot delivers to it in response, and its core shimmers dimly. It always  _has_ loved to bask in limelight, has always loved to shed power and capability. This just very rarely happens on Peridot's command.

"What if I told you that we have assassins stationed in you castle's property right now?" Peridot says.

"You're bluffing," Pearl replies instantly.

"I could be bluffing," Peridot says. "But do you really want to take that chance?"

"It's impossible. Our security is so high."

"I got in."

"You didn't get in. You got as far as the very edge of castle property. Had I been inside, had you actually attempted to infiltrate the castle itself, you would have been slaughtered in an instant. Why, you're lucky  _I_ didn't kill you. I would have. If it hadn't been for the lapis lazuli."

Peridot calmly draws in her words. Pearl is responding as predicted. "I'm a decoy."

Pearl blinks a couple times. "What?"

"A decoy." She laughs. "Do you really think they sent some half-trained peridot and a single lapis lazuli by  _themselves_ to carry out a mission this dangerous? Please. I'm a decoy. Lapis and I have only been doing what we've been doing to distract you, and look -" She gestures to the chains of hardened gel holding Pearl in place, the moisture that still glimmers on the floor and the walls of the cave, leftover from Lapis' counterattack. "It's worked, hasn't it? You've all identified me and her as your targets. Now you're all focused on us, while the  _real_ carriers of this mission are out just a few miles away from where you and me are now, waiting for my digital signal." She waves her robotic fingers in Pearl's face in demonstration. "You talk, and they'll leave the castle without harming anyone. Don't, and Rose is dead."

She's bluffing. She's totally bluffing. She and Lapis are here by themselves.

"The security's too high," Pearl repeats, carefully. "Even if what you've said is true, I only took a little over a quarter of the guard here with me. The other thirty or so are still diligently guarding the castle. There's no way anyone would be able to enter unnoticed."

Peridot mentally acknowledges this and quickly fabricates something to counter it. "But of course," she says. "And that would be true, if my companions were human."

"What?"

Peridot holds one of her elbows, and makes a vague gesticulation with her other hand, reminiscent to swirling wine in a wine glass. "We weren't stupid enough to send  _humans_ into your castle, of course." She gestures to her robonoids. "The robots that have just incarcerated you are only the beginning of what we have available to us. No, we sent, uh - we sent another kind of machine instead. Yes." She taps one limb enhancer. "Machines too small to be seen with the naked eye. All I have to do is send a signal, and they enlarge to the size of insects, latch onto your queen, and inject hooked barbs tipped with basilisk venom."

There is silence. Peridot crosses her arms as Pearl watches her carefully, then flicks her gaze to the floor, brows furrowed, face saturated in thought. "I don't believe you," she says, finally. "I've never heard of technology that advanced."

"And when was the last time you made solid observations on our progress in technology?  _You_ haven't heard of anything that advanced. For us, stuff like this is a norm."

Pearl frowns, training her eyes on the floor again. "I don't believe you," she says once more. "It's - It's impossible."

"Fine," Peridot says. "Let me show you."

She presses one finger to her gem.

The hologram features of her limb enhancers are prototypes, at best, but Peridot begs and pleads her gem to put its all into making the feature perform to the best of its ability. She's met with resistance, at first, but after a sharp  _Don't you dare,_ green, digitalized light projects from Peridot's gem into the space before her, forming a floating screen of light. A very distinct image is presented.

Queen Rose is sitting in an ornate dining room, a mug of tea cupped in her hands. She looks up from the table to smile and wave and say something to an off-screen person: she's a remarkably amicable woman, Peridot's heard. And Queen Diamond had once sent a disguised artist to paint pictures of the inside of Rose's castle, and, when Peridot got around to viewing the final results herself, this incredibly elegant dining room is what had stuck in her memory the most. If Pearl notices any inaccuracies, she doesn't show it. Peridot resists the urge to breathe a sigh of relief.

"So, here's your queen, yes?" she says. "And here -" She zooms into the space around Rose's chair, closer into the floorboards and then past bits of dust, where ten spidery robots lie in an awaiting arrangement. For an invention Peridot just made up five minutes ago, they're actually rather clever, if she does say so herself. She may have to present some ideas to John when she gets back home. "Here are the real things you should be afraid of." She emits a pair of chirped sounds from her limb enhancer; it's the command for her robonoids to hold still, which they're already doing, but she coordinates it in such a way that the robots on the fake presentation of what's happening in the castle prick up in attention at the same time, as if the command had been for them. "They're linked to me. I tell them what to do."

Pearl looks ill with fear of the unknown. But there's a twitch of awe somewhere in there too, as she gazes as the holographic projection.

Peridot makes the 'stand still' command sound twice in a row, four clicks as opposed to the two from a few moments ago, and ten hooked barbs thrust out from ten robots' underbellies. Their tips glisten with a green, viscous substance. Though the barbs are small, microscopic in their current hypothetical state, basilisk venom is so deadly and so potent that one hundredth of an ounce alone is enough to kill a human. Peridot glances at Pearl, who is shifting uncomfortably.

"It can't be real," she's murmuring. "It - It can't be."

Peridot shrugs uncaringly. "Suit yourself," she says. "If you won't give me any sort of upper hand in finding the heir, then I'll just have to cancel it out by killing the queen herself."

Two clicks in, and she hears Pearl cry "Wait -  _no!"_ from behind her.

Peridot smiles wickedly to herself and whirls around on her heels. Pearl's eyes are flared in panic, blood drained from her face. When her and Peridot's eyes meet, she hangs her head slightly, body sinking.

"I'll talk," she says, voice so thin and fragile, like she's about to cry.

Peridot arches an eyebrow. "I thought you didn't believe me?"

Pearl's eyes close. "I can't risk it," she says, so quietly that Peridot wonders if Pearl had intended for her to hear it at all. Pearl opens her eyes again. "I'll compromise," she says. "I'll answer one of your questions. In return, you must promise to let me free and remove your...possessions...from the castle."

"Two questions," Peridot says.

Pearl hesitates. "Deal."

"You have my word."

"And you have mine."

Peridot removes a small object from her pant pocket; it's a glass vial, about the size of her pinkie finger, and it's filled up half-way with a clear liquid. It doesn't have any openings, completely sealed off like a pill, and at the top there is a slice of glass and a straw chain strung through it to form a necklace.

Pearls watches the artifact with apprehensive curiosity. "Where did you get one of those?" she asks.

"Stop asking so many questions," Peridot says, approaching her and placing it around Pearl's neck. One of Queen Diamond's advisers had given it to her, just before she'd left.

"Say something," she says to Pearl.

Pearl says, simply, cooperatively, "My name is Pearl." The vial around her neck flashes green, then returns to its transparency. Peridot nods to herself. Her and Pearl's eyes meet.

"Again I'll say it: tell me where Rose's heir is."

Pearl draws in a shaky breath, foreboding and shame and regret flashing across her features in a spectrum. "He's in Lahvue Bay," she says, voice saturated in its own weight and pressurized like it's been chained to the bottom of an ocean. Green light glitters across the breastplate of silver armor, then fades out again.

The statement raises two vibrantly red flags.

  1. Lahvue Bay doesn't  _exist._ It's a myth. A heavenly, fantastical city woven in imagination to entertain children during bedtime stories.
  2. Pearl has used the pronoun 'he.' This doesn't make any sense. Rose would have no reason to hide her child away if they were male; men can't fuse their souls to the souls of gems like women can and gain their magic. Men have no power.



And yet, the vial has shuddered with green light. The instrument has been around for thousands of years and has never made a mistake; Peridot doesn't see how it should mess up now.

Anyways. She has one question left.

"And how, exactly, did Queen Rose get him there?" Peridot decides to ask. "The city isn't supposed to exist."

"I don't know. Rose never told me." Green. "That's two questions. Let me go."

"So you can go back to your castle and tell your queen what's happened so she can hide the heir somewhere else and undo all my work here? Unlikely."

Betrayal pales on Pearl's face - something Peridot finds odd, considering the fact that she wouldn't exactly label their relationship to each other as 'bubbling over with trust' in the first place.

"But - you promised," Pearl says. "You  _promised._ You have to let me go."

"I promise a lot of people a lot of things," Peridot says.

Pearl's irises are incandescent as they land on Peridot's gem, like Peridot has personally struck a match against kerosene inside the star-blue of her eyes.

"Don't worry about your queen," Peridot says, reading her. "Ant-sized assassins - now,  _that_ would really be something, even for us. It's just me and Lazuli here. And yet, you were stupid enough to fall for it all anyways."

Pearl blanches, first as pale as snowfall and then the color of blood-stained white cotton as the color floods back into her cheeks. She burrows her gaze into the floor, ashamed to look at anything other than the bits of mineral and the droplets of water that are there by her feet, and her lips press together with a tremble, eyes wide and unfocused.

"Congratulations," she says, finally, the colorful bitterness of her tone mismatching with the face of a cadaver that she's wearing. "You have your information. I'm assuming you're planning on killing me, bringing the information on the heir to your queen, and then killing him, too?"

And then, something Peridot isn't expecting:

Pearl looks up again with a sword-edged smile, face revivifying like something's kissed the life back into her, and she doesn't look quite real, eyes sparkling in correlation with the beams of starlight that pirouette about her, the whites and silvers and blues reflecting off her armor in an aura of wintery passion. "Well, it's not going to work. We've won wars against you before, and we'll do it again. And if you think, even for a second, that you suddenly have an upper hand in this game, just because Queen Yellow Diamond will know where Rose's son is - well. You don't. So kill me, if you want; it won't change anything, and I swore an oath to accept my death willingly the second I swore my life to Rose Quartz. Kill me, but in the grand scheme of things, you're only going to meet the same fate." She tilts her head to the side, only slightly. "Perhaps sooner than later. Especially if they find out what you've done to me."

"Shut up," Peridot says through ground-together teeth, fingers flexing at her sides as the icicles of Pearl's words slice eloquent incisions into her skin and slither underneath it.  _Pearl_ is the one who is mistaken, surely. She clearly doesn't realize how much is at stake here for her kingdom. Kill the heir, and Rose is all they have left to deal with. Kill Rose, and the Quartz Kingdom withers unto itself with no heir to enkindle it.

There is one thing Peridot has left to do. Pearl has guessed it correctly.

Peridot has never killed anyone before.

She's  _thought_ about killing people, especially since setting out on this journey, when murder ( _murder;_ what a cold word that is) had been placed on her non-optional to-do list. But it's one of those things where you don't comprehend the magnitude of a situation until it's there in front of you. And it has strawberry-blonde hair. And blue eyes. And armor with pink insignias swirled into the shoulders.

This is why, standing here before the girl unafraid of death, Peridot commands herself to kill her, and she.

She can't.

Her body locks up.

But she  _has_ to. Her mission won't be complete if she doesn't.

Her insides whirlpool uncomfortably, but first, the rubber; it isn't visible on Pearl's armor, so it must have been lined on the inside before the guard had come to get her. It makes no difference.

There's a class of gems (gemstones with 'quartz' in the name and a few others in particular) that specialize solely in witchcraft and sorcery. But all gems are capable of general magic - little things, such as levitating small objects, perfuming a room, fixing the buttons of a shirt, etcetera. And if there's a spell that leans more on the powerful side, a spell that would generally be reserved for those sorcery-class gems, but it falls under the same category of abilities that one's gem has, then that person can learn it. For instance, Lapis knows a spell that can soothe fish enough to allow her to pick them up right out of the water with no protest, something that came in handy when the two of them set out for the Quartz Kingdom and they ran out of food along the way.

Peridot has an incantation memorized that can dissolve anything that blocks electricity's flow.

The only problem is that magic doesn't come easily to her. Not that that's an uncommon thing where she's from, but still.

As frustrating and as painstaking as it is for her, however, she really doesn't have any other choice here. Lapis had brought a dagger with them, but Peridot would rather not use that. Not that she's scared of the concept of using a weapon as up-close and personal and messy as a dagger. She just - doesn't like them, that's all. Electrocuting is preferred. It can be long-range, and she doesn't have to feel the sickening slicing of skin beneath her hand (she hadn't even been able to gut aforementioned fish without wanting to throw up; Lapis had had to do it all).

Peridot brings up an arm and begins to murmur Latin under her breath, individual fingers drawing symbols in the air.

Nothing happens.

Peridot tries again, putting a little more effort into wringing flakes of magic from where they hide rusting in her body from disuse, and she's thrilled when she feels the hot tingle of her gem as it helps her coax the magic out. It leaks thickly from her fingertips, too much this time, and the build-up of power crumbles once again before it can reach its point of success and release.

"What are you doing?" Pearl asks.

"Be quiet," Peridot snaps.

Their eyes meet, just for a moment, and then, out of  _nowhere,_ Peridot's gem burns in the artificial sensory organs of her limb enhancer and then suddenly magic is bleeding from her in the most immaculate measurement possible, gathering in the space between her and Pearl. Peridot blinks in surprise, then quickly sets back to molding it with her fingers, muttering the spell's words.

The success is clear in the way Pearl squirms uncomfortably as magic slides into her armor and eats away at anything that could prevent Peridot from making an easy kill.

It's the first time Peridot has ever cast it that perfectly. She doesn't know what's happened, but she'll accept it.

There is nothing stopping her from killing Pearl now.

Peridot finds that she doesn't want to.

It's not because of remorse or any of that shit; Pearl is her enemy, the concept of killing her feels right. Zig-zagged threads of lime green electricity twine around her hands, waiting for the command for discharge, but Peridot, she - she doesn't think she can  _do_ this. She can't explain why. Perhaps it's because the action is one of too much consequence, perhaps it's because killing another breathing human being breaks the mold of what her courage is capable of fueling her to do, perhaps it's because she simply doesn't want to deal with the uneasiness of having a corpse in the same room as her. And there is also that look in Pearl's eyes, hidden under blankets of bravery and pride, and it's the immeasurable fear of death that glows like hopeless dying embers on her face.

" _You have to."_

_I have to._

Peridot clears her head so it's blissfully clear, squeezes her eyes shut so tightly that the biophotons dance clearly and colorfully behind her eyelids, turns her head away, and points at Pearl with her fingers. She fires, in one blistering, trembling moment of action.

Peridot waits several moments, then hesitantly pries one eye open. Pearl still has life on her face. Her breathing is ragged, and she stares at Peridot with any illusions of facing death valiantly scared off, but she's still alive.

A little bolder this time, Peridot repeats the process.

The electrical magic is there,  _right there_ in her body, she can feel it, but it refuses to escape from her and jet into Pearl. Peridot shakes her arm out and tries again.

And then she realizes that it has nothing to do with her at all.

It's her gem.

Her gem isn't  _letting_ her kill Pearl.

Memories flood into her head, memories of childhood folklore and bedtime stories and urban myth, and she takes a step backwards, her heart skipping in her chest as the initial disbelief sinks its fangs into her neck.

This can't be happening.

This.

This can't be.

This can't be  _happening._

Peridot inhales deeply to try to sedate herself, to tell herself that she's being utterly ridiculous. It's a  _children's_ fairytale! It doesn't hold any truth to it! Peridot laughs, almost hysterically, to herself. Her gem is simply being annoying, as her gem is always so annoying. She isn't sure why she had leapt to that conclusion in the first place.

The sky outside brightens. Prelude to dawn, all that.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let's play a game of 'how many times can i change the summary until im happy with it.'
> 
> anyways. here's chapter four *jazz hands*

" _I_ _never wanted this to happen," she said. "I never wanted this. I never wanted you, not before tonight."_

 _Alexander laughed, taking her hand in his and kissing the top of her wrist. "I know you didn't. I could have guessed that_ _myself, all things considered. You_ did  _try to kill me."_

 _"But I was never able to!" Ulexite protested_ ,  _and now she was laughing, too. "And could you truly blame me? We were at war. I was a soldier. It had been my job to kill you."_

_Alexander shook his head. "The only reason you didn't kill me was because your gem wouldn't allow it."_

_"That's true," Ulexite replied, "and thank the heavens for it, too. It would be a shame if you weren't around to be by my side now." Silence, broken only by the cadence of crickets and the warbled whistling of nocturnal songbirds. "Oi," she said, "Alexander."_

_"Yes?"_

_"What if it knew?"_

_"Knew what?"_

_"Knew that you were the one."_

_"The one?"_

_Ulexite rested her palm against her gem and closed her fingers around it. "What if gems have that insight? To recognize who their humans' destined loves are? I'm just saying maybe that's why I couldn't kill you. Because my gem_ knew. _"_

_— Excerpt from Krenelope's Anthology of Children's Fairytales, published in Zelonia of the Diamond Kingdom, 1655_

* * *

 

Behind her, someone whistles slowly.

"Not. A _word,"_ Peridot says, before Lapis can open her mouth. 

Lapis is leaning against the lip of the cave, her arms crossed. Beyond her, a sliver of of sun pokes up from behind the horizon of treetops, its orange-pink light forming a gradient with the milky blue painting the sky. She's smiling like a madwoman. "Good morning, Ulexite. How's it been?"

"What are you?" Peridot says. "Eight years old?" (She almost likes Lapis better when she's passed out on the floor.)

Lapis, still grinning, gestures towards Pearl. "Go ahead, then, and prove me wrong. Kill her."

Peridot does. Try to.

Green light fizzes at her fingertips and simmers out.

"It's because my gem is disobeying me," she says. "It's not the first time it's happened."

"That," Lapis says, "is debatable. It's disobeyed you before. Just not like this."

* * *

 

Part of Pearl watches this all unfold and hopes that — well. It just _hopes_. Her beating heart casts a wish to remain that way.

The other part of her wishes Peridot would just get on with it already; standing and listening to two people discuss her death makes her feel like a cow next in line at a slaughterhouse. She isn't entirely undeserving of it, either, now is she? Her life's purpose had been to safeguard Rose and her secrets. If Queen Diamond gets her hands on Steven, it will be her fault.  _Her_ fault. And her fault alone. 

You become sickeningly numb to the thought of death when it's all you think about for five years. When your life is dedicated to being ready to sacrifice the warm, rich, healthy blood pumping through your veins at a moment's notice if it means protecting someone else, death is a passing thought rather than the One Big Fear it is for everyone else.

She's a royal guard. Death is a career choice.

She just never thought she'd go like  _this._ Trapped in a wet cave in the middle of nowhere by a peridot who clearly has no idea what she's doing and a lapis lazuli who can't seem to decide whether she's a serious person or not. 

"I'm done talking to you," Peridot is saying (Pearl has been trying to figure what her and Lapis have been talking about and it's been like trying to understand an inside joke that you're on the outside of), and she turns around to face Pearl. "Don't think this means you're off the hook. I'm still going to kill you." She says it like a prideful student called upon by the teacher would recite an answer.

"Are you?" Lapis says, and Peridot's chest expands as she sharply breathes in, fists clenching at her sides. 

"Yes. I am. The — The second my gem decides to be cooperative."

"Well," Lapis says, teasingly tapping her finger on her chin, "there's a dagger in one of our bags."

"I know."

"You could use _it_ to kill her," Lapis says, helpfully.

"I  _know,_ Lapis."

"I'm pretty sure it's in the blue —"

"You know what?" Peridot says, irritated. "Maybe I will. Use the dagger. Right now." 

She makes her way towards the back of the cave.

Lapis' facial expression softens and stills, as if she hadn't been expecting Peridot to  _actually_ listen to her. She reaches out with her hand, withdraws it, reaches out again, fingers outstretching and curling and balling up.

"Peridot — stop."

"What is it  _now_?" 

"We don't have to do this, Peridot. I'm better than this.  _You're_ better than this. Right? Just — Just let her go. We can stay here. Live in a village somewhere, so you wouldn't have to face Diamond's wrath ever again."

Peridot bursts out laughing, so unexpected and so uproarious that Pearl jumps two feet. "Stay here? Are you even _listening_ to yourself?" she says. "Sure, sure, let's stay here. Why don't we go out for tea with a wraith and domesticate a couple of dragons while we're at it?" She walks in front of Pearl again, her back to her as she faces Lapis, twirling a dagger in between her fingers like a baton.

"We used to be so close," Lapis says. "We used to be on the same page. What happened to that?"

"You changed," Peridot says. "That's what happened."

"You're right," Lapis says, leering so coldly it's as if she's changed the phase of the moisture in the air to ice, "I  _changed._ Because God fucking  _forbid_ that I be one of the few people smart enough to want to get away from all the corruption back at home, and from the masses of famine, and the unnecessary bloodshed and unjustified beheadings to any unfortunate individual who dares even to think apart from Queen Diamond's ideologies and I hear them all the time, you don't know what it's  _like,_ Peridot, to hear the screaming and crying of our people, because of what the queen's done to them, torturing them, stripping them of all their freedoms, forcing families apart —"

She stops, suddenly, and reaches into her hair.

Pearl has chills pinpricking her skin. She's never heard a person of the Diamond Kingdom speak so openly. She doesn't even think anyone above the lower classes are aware of what nightmares go on in that kingdom, seeing as Queen Diamond is notorious in her methods of censorship. 

In Lapis' hand is a pink rose, its petals frosted in a flamboyant amount of glitter. "I've never seen this flower before in my life," she says. "How did it get in my..." There's another rose, too, its stem winding around her arm like a thin snake, the flower resting itself on her palm. Petals poke out of her shirt, and Lapis jumps back in surprise, tugging at them. Pearl is reminded of Sphene, and Lapis clearly thinks the same thing, because she pokes her head out of the cave and then shakes her head at Peridot's inquiring gaze. It must be a normal thing for them, fighting acidly and then falling back into a relationship of teamwork and cooperation a moment later.

Pearl feels something brush between where her armor cuts off and the crystalline structures swallowing her hands, and she glances at herself. Roses twine around her wrists like corsages, and she squirms uncomfortably as they slither and try to push up from under her armor.

Peridot takes a cautious step back.

There are no flowers on her. 

Roses crack open the cave floor and climb the walls, settling into vertical gardens there, lining the cavern mouth; they line  _everything_ and they are suddenly  _everywhere,_ embellishing the walls in masses of pink, sparkling flora.

"What's going on?" Peridot demands.

"I don't know," Pearl says, and the truth syrup that hangs around her neck glows green, then red, then green again, like it's unsure of itself. Peridot stares at her chest, but before she can comment, blazing pink light floods the cavern; it blinds, blisters, until it fades back out a moment later. What's left is a hued glaze over everything, like Pearl is staring at the world through pink-tinted glasses.

"What. Is going. _On,"_ Peridot repeats, squeezing her eyes shut behind the spectacles on her short, pointed nose that have replaced the goggles from earlier to adjust to the sudden alterations in light.

Pearl is interrupted before she can say anything.

Sounds rise like a heat wave from the forest, the crooning of birds and the detached chorus of frogsong and the gentle, caressing, wordless notes of forest nymphs and dryads; there's a harmonization of freshwater mermaids, a chittering of squirrels and the mewlings of wild cats. A hound-sized bird lands at the edge of the cave, its three ribbon-like tails flowing out from behind it, and it tilts its beak to the sky and sings, taking no note of the three humans behind it. Beyond the forest the music of a million instruments flares up in one symphony, as if everyone in the entire kingdom has taken their instrument and played; there's a crescendo of violin and piano, of flutes and fiddles and button accordions. And then there is also human voices, all singing one song with a million mouths and a million eyes and a million hearts.

And Pearl, despite having never heard this song in her life, despite not knowing the words, she parts her lips and she sings with them.

 _"May her blood rest in fire and stars /_ _May her lungs settle with glitter and smoke / If her people burn, then we burn together / Lifting our hearts to her / Exemplifying the glory that is her kingdom / Our kingdom / Always and forevermore._

_"May we always sing this song in remembrance of her / May we never forget what she's sacrificed for her people / For our people / Always and forevermore._

_"She has loved us / She has blessed us / And now, we turn her back to the Earth / To the Stars / And to the Ether."_

The music stops. The singing stops. The sounds of animals and magical creatures stop. The bird in the cave preens itself and flies away. The land is no longer pink, and the roses disintegrate.

Lapis and Peridot are staring at her, entranced.

"You're a very good singer," Lapis says, and Peridot clears her throat and stares intently at the wall.

Pearl is at a loss for words; the song had sounded haunted and hollow and beautiful leaving her lips, despite having never heard it before; the words had planted themselves in her brain and enslaved her voice, winding her up like a music box and forcing to sing, and sing, and sing.

And then, suddenly, she realizes.

She has heard this song before. It's a mourning song. 

Her body is freeze-dried, the fluids drain from her heart, and a cruel, infernal paralysis guzzles her down. She slices in half, then again, then again, until she's a thousand pieces that she rearranges back into a human's body but it's not the same, she's all mismatched and off and so utterly  _wrong._

"It's Rose," she chokes in a crackling whisper, her words detached from her, from this plane of reality. "Rose Quartz is dead."


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i meant to have this up last night but when i sat down for the final rounds of editing i kept getting distracted and was just kinda like nyeeeeeeh
> 
> speaking of which, the next chapter or two might come kinda late too. i have two weeks of crying and suffering and no time to write coming up a.k.a. midterm exams

Pearl's facial expression suggests that Armageddon is here, that there are ropes of lava raining down from the sky, that the Great Kraken has awaken and is looking to encurl the earth in its sentient-chaos tentacles and crush the planet like the vermin it is; or, alternatively (more accurately), she looks how a simple human being would while weeping over the fresh corpse of a loved one. Peridot, meanwhile, looks like a cat who's spent eight of its nine lives hunting a rat, but now that the rodent lies lifeless in its claws, the cat has no idea what it's actually supposed to  _do_ with the victory. The two of them are staring at each other, Peridot with delighted disbelief, Pearl not staring at Peridot at all, really, but vacantly gazing right past her, lips parted slightly, eyes glassy.

It's a shame, Lapis thinks. The sunrise had been so pretty; the mood corkscrewing its way into their odd trio's atmosphere hardly lives up to the fairy lights and sorbet oranges outside.

"Do you know for sure?" she ventures to ask.

If Pearl hears her, if Pearl is even on Earth with them, she doesn't show it. Watery pupils and ghostly skin and shattered breathing.

"I don't believe it," Peridot says in a hushed murmur, then turns to Lapis, her lips curling up. "Do you know what this means, Lapis?" Lapis shudders. Of course she does, of  _course._ "Hell, the Quartz Kingdom might as well hand their lands over to us now! With no queen, and a twelve-year-old heir..." She laughs and shakes her head. "They'll crumble within a week. It probably won't even take us that long to storm in and conquer them."

"Wonderful," Lapis says. Then, to change the subject, because she doesn't want to figure out how she's going to deal with this new information yet, she says, "What are we going to do with Pearl? You can't kill her, and I won't kill her. Now that Rose is gone, we have no reason to not let her go." Pearl, this poor woman. She doesn't deserve this. She deserves to be at home, mourning with her people.

"I don't think so," Peridot says incredulously. "We'll bring her with us."

"With what? How will we keep her detained?"

"We'll...figure something out. But I'm not letting her go."

"I have to go back," Pearl whispers, and Peridot and Lapis turn to look at her. Pearl's lips barely moved to allow the words, and still she is staring pallidly at nothing. "No one but me knows where Steven is. Rose wasn't going to send anyone for him until he was sixteen. I have to go back. I have to tell them. So we can bring him home."

"Yes, sure; like  _that's_ going to happen," Peridot tells her, half-smiling maliciously. "You're ours now. There is no 'going back.'"

When they were younger, Peridot was the type of child who would insist upon escorting the cockroach outside instead of killing it, capturing the fly in a cup and letting it go where it's safe instead of swatting at it, being the one to come to the rescue when there was a gecko camped out in a ladies' restroom and all the other little girls were too scared to relocate it. Perhaps her interest was never with humans, choosing instead to sit alone under the shade of trees and watch with colorful curiosity as centipedes crawled about her arm, but such attitudes made her a compassionate and attentive child in general; always so kind, always had the best intentions at heart.

The young woman Lapis has been around for the past few years is not anywhere near that girl; some sort of invisible, ethereal creature has sapped the compassion from Peridot's being and ran with it. Lapis has tried to bring that girl back, but she's.

She's starting to give up, honestly.

This is the woman she's grown up with, the friend she used to adore so much, but even with those years of bond under her belt, she knows she's not going to be the one to bring Peridot back. If Peridot's ever going to change, it'll be of her own accord, and aforementioned accord is unlikely. But Lapis wonders - no, hopes, purely and solidly hopes - that there's something,  _any_ thing, in Peridot's future that will help influence her to restore that fireplace-style warmth to herself.

Lapis looks to Pearl. She doesn't know if she truly believes in that legend, about gems not allowing their humans to kill whoever they're destined to fall in love with. But if it is true, then wouldn't  _that_ be something interesting to watch unfold. (In her mind, there's already an alternate universe where the three of them are best friends and Lapis plays cupid between the two. She doubts its probability, but it's nice to imagine Peridot finding someone who could tease out the remnants of love and empathy inside her and magnify them.)

"I have to go back," Pearl whispers, again. Peridot narrows her eyes at her, then turns to Lapis.

"How do I get her to be quiet?"

Lapis thinks of several things she wants to say, but she knows that none of them are anything that Peridot wants to hear, so she shrugs languidly instead. "Let her keep talking. She'll tire herself out and quiet eventually." That's what she's suppose to sound like, as a member of the upper class, no? Cold? No regard for people's feelings? And, oh, that's the other thing. If Lapis blames anything for the person Peridot matured into, the people everyone around her matured into, it's Queen Diamond. Lapis, blessed with both the strength to not be swayed and tainted and the intelligence required to know to when to keep her mouth shut, made it by Diamond's manipulation unscathed. Most people don't. Peridot constantly accuses Lapis of changing in a way that Peridot makes out to be blasphemous, but she's got it all backwards. Everyone else metamorphosed into insects with dark wings and tongues specialized to sip the poisoned lies they sustain themselves on; Lapis remained a larva; alienated by the corrupted blossoming of everyone around her, perhaps, but at least she's pure, and hasn't allowed herself to ingest the same propaganda as her peers.

"Well," Peridot is saying, "she can talk nonsense all she wants, it won't help her case. Anyways, we should be preparing to make the journey home now, yes?"

Poisoned lies, members of the bourgeoisie giggling over cakes while every class below them pray for scraps of bread, a kingdom built off suffocating taxes and oppression...

Peridot snaps her fingers in front of Lapis' face, and they make an odd, metallic clanging sound. "Lapis?"

...Serfdom, slavery, the ignorance, Lord, the  _ignorance..._

" _Lapis!_ Geez, where are you? We have to _go_. The sooner the better."

She closes her eyes. "No."

"...Lapis." She doesn't have to see to know the expression Peridot must have: a sour concoction of apprehension and vexation. "You aren't about to go off on one of your idiotically radical tangents, are you? Come  _on._ We have to go."

She breathes in, and she smells sea spray and vanilla in the future she's envisioning. In real life, sunlight mildly burns the back of her neck, and it feels so  _good,_ only because it isn't Diamondic sunlight. "No. You go, if you'd like. But I'm not going. I don't want to be a part of this anymore." She slowly lifts her eyelids, watches Peridot's arm fall limply to her side, the wild chaos of her hair matching the rest of her.

"You can't be serious," she says, coolly, with poorly-concealed heat bubbling underneath the surface of that.

"I'm serious. I've never been  _more_ serious." Hurt flashes across Peridot's face, followed by anger, followed by aggression, followed by hurt again. "I've spent roughly ten years of my life trying to get you on the same page as me, but it wasn't ever going to happen, was it? Honestly - are you  _surprised_ that I'm doing this?"

"No," Peridot murmurs, shell-shocked, "I suppose I'm not." She bites her lip, but it's the only sign of vulnerability she shows before she squares her shoulders, puffs out her chest, and clasps her hands behind her back. "Well, it makes no difference to me," she intones. "Go ahead, stay here. See if I care. I'll take Pearl back by myself."

She can feel the water lapping at her toes, her back facing a beach house, miles upon miles away from her room in Diamond's castle. She feels purified. Invigorated.  _Liberated._ "That's not going to happen either."

"I'm...sorry? It's not?" Peridot tilts her head, as if to say,  _Rebel against everything that we are, do it again, I dare you._

 _I'm sorry, Peridot, but this is everything_ you  _are, not me._ "You're not going to take her with you. I am."

"What do you  _mean_ you're going to -"

Lapis brushes past, so she's facing the hollow shell of Pearl. Lapis whispers her name and puts a hand on Pearl's shoulder, and the metal is cold and lifeless to the touch. "You can mourn later, I promise," she says, "but I need you to snap out of this, just for a couple of minutes, so I can talk to you." Pearl is stiff for several moments, and then her eyes, eerie and milky like a snake's are before it peels off its own skin, float dazedly to her. Lapis glances over her shoulder, expects Peridot to charge forward, throw a fit, whatever, but she does no such thing. She stands there. Like a statue. A stunned, slow-processing statue.

"I'm listening," Pearl whispers, with the voice of a spectre.

Lapis tries to smile encouragingly at her. "I'm going to help you," she says quietly. And then, louder, "I'm going to go with your people to Lahvue Bay, wherever it is. I'm going to help you bring the heir to his throne." If that won't prove that she's serious about this, about switching sides, she doesn't know what will. She feels the popping needles of static electricity poke into her skin, which means that Peridot is boring her gaze into the back of Lapis' neck. She can glare all she wants. Lapis, after twenty-two years of rising action and built-up tension, has made up her mind.

She's finally made up her mind. 

"Help me," Pearl muses, tilting her head to the side, looking at nothing in particular. "No one can help me."

Lapis' hand slides down Pearl's arm and falls off. "I'm sorry for your loss. I really am. But we should get going, before my friend here accepts what's going on and goes off on us."

"What makes you think I'm not already plotting out your death?" Peridot snaps. "I'll report you. They'll execute you for this." Lapis ignores her.

"No one can help me," Pearl repeats dreamily.

Lapis raises two clumps of water from the pool and fashions them into blades, and they knife through the robonoids' hardened gel with little difficulty. She repeats the process with the mounds of the same blue-green rock swallowing her feet, scraping the blades underneath and then shaving off the excess substance. Pearl falls bonelessly to the floor, on her hands and knees. She's been crying, though she's made no effort to wipe the tears away, so they stream cleanly down her cheeks until they reach her mouth and collect in the crease of her tightly-pressed lips.

"Pearl," Lapis says, "Pearl, you have to get up. We have to go."

"No," Pearl says, and the corporeality is starting to creep back into her voice, "no. Leave me here. I can't go back. I'm -" She breaks off in a sob before she can finish her sentence, only once, before she claps a hand over her mouth, closes her eyes, sets her jaw.

"What about going back and telling everyone else about the heir?" Lapis urges. "You can't stay here, Pearl. You have too many responsibilities. Are you really going to allow yourself to die here? Like this?"

Pearl's lip trembles, wet. "You're right," she says, squeezing her eyes further shut, tilting her face towards the ground. "I don't deserve them, though, now do I? The responsibilities. My position. You go and deliver the message about the heir. Let me stay here. Let Peridot take me hostage. I don't deserve to go back."

"Listen," Lapis says, "you can have your pity party later, once we're there. Okay? Now, please, let's  _go._ Let's go..." She wants to try the word, just once, to see how it feels on her tongue. "Let's go home."

"Home," Pearl whispers. The tears don't let up. She nods. 

Lapis extends a hand. "I'll help you up." Pearl takes it, and, shaking with the effort, the weakness of her body, manages to stand.

They turn to the opening of the cave.

"Peridot," Lapis says. "I suppose this is goodbye." She knows it's not, really; Peridot has this method of worming her way into things you don't want nor expect her to. Lapis has no doubt that she'll see her again one day. But saying those words aloud sting all the same. If only they'd known, as children, the sort of end their friendship would come to...

Is it the end? Lapis doesn't think so. But the vacation from each other is necessary.

"I can't let you do this," Peridot says. She stands like a roadblock in the orifice of the cave (not a very intimidating roadblock).

"Then why haven't you made any effort to stop me?" Lapis replies. Pearl sniffles and sways at her side, and Lapis grabs her arm to hold her up.

"Because I -" Peridot growls in frustration and kicks at a pile of pebbles, sending them scattering across the floor. "Because I  _can't._ I know you'd triumph over me." That's maybe the third, if not the second or first, time Lapis has ever heard Peridot vocally admit defeat. It's the only indication she gives that she's emotional over the situation.

"So you  _will_ let me do this."

Peridot scowls viciously. "Begrudgingly. But don't think this is the end, Lazuli. It - It may seem like you've won, but you haven't. I'll figure something out and get you back for this, when you least expect it."

Lapis fights a smile. "I know you will. But for now, as they say in Fluoritine lands and whatnot,  _au revoir._ " She takes a step forward, staring at Peridot expectantly. Peridot meets her gaze heavily, then grumbles to herself and steps out of the way. Lapis can almost read the thoughts in her head like a book:  _It's okay, I can do this, I'm not technically letting her go. I'm simply strategically avoiding a fight, so I can surprise her later with one of my devious plans but of course it isn't going to work because Lapis is twelve times better than I'll ever be and to be honest I should just let her leave in peace and live out the life she's always wanted._ (Okay, well, maybe she took a few liberties with that last bit. Still.)

"Are you ready, Pearl?" Lapis asks quietly. Pearl just barely nods her head.

* * *

 

Pearl's limbs move like a puppet's, and she's aware of the passing of trees and other scenery, but she's in autopilot, unprocessing.

_Rose._

* * *

 

Peridot can't stand to watch them leave, so she turns her back to the outside world the second they're gone. In a few moments, she'll start devising her plan; she has no time to waste here.

She watches the blue fires flicker blurrily from within the stalactites for a moment, then sits down. Alone.

Then again, that's the way it's always been, isn't it?


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAND WE'RE BACK!!! god omg to those of u following the story and asking me when it was coming back and stuff i'm so sorry ?? i've gotten crazy invested in undertale and i was originally just gonna take a short break from this fic to write a one-shot; the one-shot turned into a three-shot, which turned into the desire to get started on something undertale-related that is as big and as complex as this fic is, so, that ended up taking more than the planned week or two lmfao
> 
> and what's even worse is that this homecoming chapter is only like 400 words lmfao sorry for the shortness but ?? it kinda had to be its own chapter, and i couldn't skip over it either guhh
> 
> either way, weekly updates might not be a thing anymore now that i'm working on two huge projects at once, but i promise i'll never disappear for anywhere near that long of a time again !!

Something scrapes against the stone next to her.

Peridot rockets upwards, so abruptly her brain hurts as if she's left bits of it behind, and thoughts swim in a disconnected soup about each other, all thick and cottony with sleep residue. She on instinct flings herself backwards, thrusts a protective arm before her face, braces herself, chest and lungs knotting up into a coagulated horde of panic and -

It's just a bird. It strikes its toes against the floor again, pecking at the infinitesimal scratch marks it leaves there. Peridot lets out a breath, rubs her hands over her face, and the bird glances warily at her with scarlet, cat-like eyes before hopping a few inches to the left.

This is the fourth time this has happened tonight. Peridot's beginning to think she's better off not sleeping at all; she's not usually this jumpy, even while in foreign locations such as this one, because she's always had Lapis to...to watch her back, and, uh.

Right. That's right. Lapis isn't here anymore.

Peridot bitterly scoops a rock off the floor, hurls it at the bird. She misses completely, but it's enough so that the bird squawks and lifts itself up with a startled flutter of its wings, flies out of the cave and into open air. Peridot watches it leave and folds her legs into her chest, hugging her thighs and resting her chin on her knee. Stupid bird.

And the worst part is this: she's realized that she _needs_ Lapis.

She's starving. Her stomach gnaws on her from the inside out. She's exhausted, eyes dead weights set in her skull, but paranoia won't let her rest. An inkling of a feeling, dark and cold and sticky, twines around her ribs. If Lapis were here, none of these things would be a problem.

What she needs now, more than anytime prior, is a plan: win back Lapis as her token friend, win back Pearl as her token accomplishment. Peridot stands up. She looks out over the forest and she thinks.

She could definitely make it back to the kingdom on her own if she tried, but that has the high potential for disaster, considering she'd be going back empty-handed. And, stars help her she hates to admit it, but by the way things are already going, she won't be making any efficient distance without Lapis here with her.

One available, obvious option: gain Pearl's trust, sway Lapis' back into her favor.

Gain their trust by, say, following them to Lahvue Bay, making _'friends'_ along the journey, finding the heir, kidnapping them, bringing them back to Queen Diamond herself and gleaning the rewards. Just as, you know, an unsuspiciously specific example.

Peridot heads back into the depth of the cave, towards her bags.


	7. Chapter 7

Lapis lingers in the corner, leaning with her weight supported by the indent where one wall meets the other. Her arms are crossed and her hands are tucked into her underarms. The floor is winter-white, marble with dyed strokes of pastel pink whirled in, and stretched from end to the other is a violet, velvet roll of carpet that is embellished with golden flowers at the fringes; it leads to a throne ornamented in a luscious garden of bubblegum-pink, silk-woven roses that overlay the arms, the back of the throne; the legs are made of a maroon-tinted metal as vibrant and as rich as gold. The walls are white, immaculate stone, with sculptures engraved into them: heroic figures, with weapons raised, hair streaming out behind them, gems glowing divinely, victoriously. Lapis thinks they might tell a story if one was to look at each one consecutively, but she hadn't taken the time to do such a thing.

Pearl and five other young women Lapis has never seen before are standing and talking in a circle in the middle of the throne room, with hushed, strained voices. Pearl seems to be the one most active in the conversation, mouth constantly working with a hundred fluctuations of facial expression per second, but there's a sense of detachment about her, eyes flared and unfocused, and she's wringing her hands so obsessively Lapis half-expects the skin on them to start coming off.

When they'd made it to the castle, Pearl had immediately been greeted with a cascade of "Oh, thank god you're all right," and "Where's the rest of the guard?" and "Pearl, I'm so, so sorry." The atmosphere was raw, volatile, melancholy. Lapis knew immediately that she didn't belong here. These people were mourning. She hadn't even known Rose.

The five women had pulled Pearl and Lapis aside and ushered them into the throne room for a meeting. Right now, Pearl looks up from her hands and over to Lapis and makes a beckoning gesticulation, her face set in solemnity.

"You're part of this too, now," she says, quietly, when Lapis obliges and abandons her corner.

One of the women, tall, curvaceous, with a flow of mahogany hair that falls in thick beach waves in front of one shoulder, holds out her hand. "My name is Cherry Quartz," she says, and Lapis takes the hand, shakes it once. "It's a pleasure to meet you; it's rare, for someone of Diamond background to see the light and join us instead, but hearing such a story never fails to inspire me nonetheless." She withdraws her hand and takes instead to twirling a lock of hair around her finger. "I'll be running things until we elect a queen regent. I understand that you and Pearl mean to travel to..." She smiles oddly, eyebrows furrowed, and tilts her head. "To Lahvue Bay? Somehow? Either way, I understand that you mean to retrieve the deceased queen's heir and bring him back so he can begin learning about what it takes to be a king as soon as possible."

"Yes," Lapis says, with the adamancy of a revolutionary. "I'm confused about that, though. How - why is this heir so important if he's - he's a _he._ "

"Rose is - was so powerful," Pearl says, and she inhales through her mouth, breath wavering like she's about to cry (again). (If there's one thing Lapis learned on the way over here, it's that Pearl cries. A lot.) "It's true that men cannot normally inherit the soul of a gemstone, but there was a certain phenomenon that occurred here. When Steven was born, Rose's gem reacted to him; when it was in his presence, it would glow with a scintillation that would intensify the closer he got to her. And he could - he would _do_ things. Sometimes one of us would go into his room to check on him and he would be out of his crib, perched on top of his dresser despite having no logical way of getting up there. It just about gave us a heart attack. And there - there was this one time." Pearl laughs, deflatedly. "He was sitting by a mountain - we were out on a picnic, Rose and I and some of the guard - and a rock tumbled down over it. It was a beautiful day; none of us were particularly paying attention. Just before it hit him, he managed to summon his mother's signature magic shield above himself.

"We figured out, eventually, what was going on. Or, theorized, rather; Rose was so powerful, to the point where some of that must have bled into him when he was, erm," she makes a face, "when he was _conceived._ Rose knew your ex-kingdom would go ballistic coming after him if they found out. So she sent him away with Garnet, a good friend of ours, to protect him and, ah, essentially, raise him."

"Oh," Lapis says, trying to process this. "I mean - that makes no sense - but okay."

"It's the truth," Cherry Quartz says. "Unless you've got another theory."

Lapis shakes her head. "Never said that I didn't believe you. Just that it doesn't make sense. It's unheard of."

"I know," Pearl says, "I know." Her features soften. "Steven. It's been so long. I wonder if he looks like his mother." The skin around her eyes had only just been starting to clear, but it breaks out into another rash as her eyes pool over with moisture and she cups a hand to her mouth, shakes her head, looks at the floor.

"So," Lapis says, watching as the other five women crowd further in around Pearl, faces tightening in sympathy as they offer a held hand or a palm on a shoulder, "yes, so, speaking of Steven. When are we planning on leaving for that trip?"

"Soon," Pearl says, wiping her eyes on her arm; she'd shed her armor the second they got to the castle. "Tonight, if we can."

"I wouldn't," says a shorter, round-faced girl, forest green hair organized into a braid that trails down to her waist. "Why not wait until morning?"

"The sooner we leave, the better."

"I agree," Lapis says. "I'm powerful, and so is she. We've got ourselves covered."

"It's a death wish, heading out there at night," another woman says, looking idly at her nails, "but, hey, we've already lost like ten of our guard to god knows what, so why not just throw our captain into the casualties, too."

"Rubelite!" the green-haired girl playfully scoffs, elbowing her.

"We don't have time for this," Lapis says, addressing the group around her. "We need to start getting ready to go."

"Well, don't tell us," Rubelite says. "You guys go and get packed up. Leave it to us to spread word of your whereabouts, alright?"

"Thank you all," Pearl says. "Before we go on, let's go over our responsibilities one more time, please."

Cherry Quartz laughs. "We've already gone over it like five times, but if it'll make you happy, alright." Gesturing around the circle from one girl to another respectively, she says, "I'm the interim queen, Emerald's handling the parliament because I'm shit at that economic stuff, Chrysocolla and Olivine are going to travel through the kingdom and help spread accurate information about what's happened over here, and Rubelite's in charge of the guard while you're gone. If anything else that needs to be done arises later on, which, realistically, it will, me and Emerald and Rubelite will decide what to do."

Pearl nods sternly. "Good. I'm going to go get my things prepared for the journey. Lapis, whenever you're ready, just wait for me at the drawbridge, alright?"

"Sure."

Pearl tells the group goodbye and steps away.

"If she's gone for, like, three hours," Rubelite says to Lapis after she's gone, "just know that she's suffering in her Depression Crevice and not actually getting ready."

"Rubelite, there's no need to be harsh," Chrysocolla says, gently. "We're all mourning."

"Pearl more than any of us, though," Cherry Quartz points out. "You know how she felt about Rose. This is a different kind of agony for her than it is for any of us."

"Yeah, because she's fucking _gay,_ " Rubelite snorts, and everyone laughs a little at that.

Lapis shifts unsteadily where she stands. "Well, it was nice meeting you all," she says, "but I should probably get going now, yeah?"

"Probably, yes," Emerald says, still smiling. "We bid you good luck and prosperity, Lapis Lazuli."

* * *

 

 

Pearl does not take three hours, but rather one third of it. Lapis had gotten lost trying to find her way back out of the castle, so she ends up only having to wait for fifteen minutes at the drawbridge that connects one luxurious, flower-plastered slab of land to another, above crystalline blue water that, really, would encourage intruders to swim in it, not veer away. Maybe the moat is more for aesthetic purposes than it is for defense.

"Alright, are we all set?" Pearl says, adjusting a duffel bag over her shoulder. She's dressed heavier than before - not, like, armor heavy, but there's a pale blue jacket, pants, and a pair of hiking boots.

"Yeah," Lapis says, ill-prepared in comparison, with her sleeveless shirt and skirt. She's good in a shirt and skirt, though. She traveled all the way over here in them, and she can fight in them fine. If it seriously starts to get annoying, she can purchase another set of clothes on the journey.

"Wonderful," Pearl says, smiling as she puts her hands on her hips and looks out beyond the royal front yard. "And, ah, where - where, exactly, are we planning on going first?"

"Oh, uh." Lapis frowns. "I hadn't really thought that far ahead. I was really high on, you know, that whole adrenaline rush that comes along with betraying the kingdom that I'd been growing up in for twenty-two years."

"Understandable," Pearl says, with a slight, awkward laugh.

"It would help if we actually had _any_ idea where we were going. But Lahvue - that place isn't even supposed to exist."

"Well, it does exist, and we're going to find it," Pearl says, brushing past her and onto the drawbridge, and Lapis follows suit. She thinks she hears Pearl murmur something like "I'm going to do this for you, Rose; I'm going to bring him back for you," to herself.

And it makes Lapis wonder, randomly, what Peridot's doing.


	8. Chapter 8

Pearl puts off vibes of self-assurance and steadiness as they walk, but they're about as flimsy as tissue paper, and she is not a good actor. Lapis has to hand it to her, though, for having the adamancy to set out on an adventure such as this one directly after taking a sledgehammer to the heart.

They're in the forest they had traveled through last night, and Lapis winces inwardly when her eyes catch on the pinprick that is the mountainside cave in the distance. She can imagine Peridot still curled up in there, sulking in the corner, the blue lights masking her in a glaze of melancholy as she sits with her chin on her knees. Or maybe she's already up and gone, traversing the forest with death threats and vows of revenge curdling in her brain. God, who knows. Who _cares._ Peridot's the one who refused to change for the better. Lapis needs to let it go.

"Oh, here we go," Pearl says, gesturing to an old oak tree. "This would be a good place to stop and rest, don't you think?"

"Yeah," Lapis says blandly. "I'm pretty tired myself."

They settle down in the shade, Lapis slumping against the trunk of the tree while Pearl brushes leaves and dirt out of the way and sits herself delicately in the grass. Birdsong is strung through the trees above them, and sunlight drips from the gaps between the leaves. Lapis tilts her head back in breathes it all in, the fresh air, the sharp, pleasant scent of the pine trees, the sounds of foliage sliding and pushing against each other every time a gust of wind pushes through the area.

And then the hair at the back of Lapis' neck starts to stand on end. Something twists through the air, keen and feeble and electric. She recognizes the energy instantly.

Lapis sits up, suddenly enough so Pearl looks to her and blinks curiously, and the energy is sizzling at the base of her skull - she's familiar with it, so it sparkles more potently in recognition - and she tries to pinpoint its source, tries to - oh.

So _that's_ where you are.

"Peridot," she intones. "You can come down whenever you're ready."

The perplexed expression on Pearl's face doesn't ease. The bushels of leaves and branches above them yelp, rustle, and regurgitate a vaguely humanoid blur onto the ground.

 _"Ow,"_ Peridot mutters, rubbing her head, and then her eyes latch onto Pearl and Lapis and flare into the size of saucers. Pearl, startled, starts to stand up, light fizzing in her hand as a sword starts to materialize there, but Lapis puts a hand on her arm and gently drags her back into a sitting position.

"Peridot," Lapis says evenly. "What are you doing here?"

"I-I, uh," Peridot says, uncomfortably shifting backwards away from the pair. Her chest is heaving, and her hair (if possible) is far more mussed than usual. "I was just, y'know. Taking...a walk."

"Through the treetops," Lapis deadpans.

"...Yeah!"

They stare at each other. Next to them, Pearl awkwardly glances away and drums her fingers against her thigh.

"Okay, fine," Peridot says, standing up and dusting off her pants. She straightens herself out, facial expression turning to stone as she folds her arms behind her back. "I have a proposition to make."

Lapis lifts an eyebrow.

"To my understanding," Peridot continues, "you are both setting out to search for the deceased queen's heir. Is this correct?"

"That's correct," Lapis says.

Peridot brings her fist to her mouth, clears her throat, and re-twines her arms behind her. "I would like to come with you."

Lapis eyes her for a moment, as if to see if Peridot's next line is going to be something along the lines of "Haha, just kidding! Have fun living out the rest of your life in betrayal! If you die on the journey, no one's gonna miss you, so feel free to do so whenever!" When Peridot doesn't say anything, merely eyes her right back with her Adam's apple bobbing nervously, Lapis rises from the ground. Pearl follows the action.

"For what reason?" Lapis asks suspiciously.

"I've made myself aware of the fact that to return to the castle as the situation is right now is suicide. Queen Diamond would never forgive me for both failing my mission and losing one of her most magic-powerful subjects in the process. I have nowhere else to go."

Okay, yeah _right._ For Peridot to admit defeat would signal the beginning of Armageddon. There are clearly ulterior motives there.

Lapis should tell her off. They're enemies now.

"Okay," she says.

" _What?"_ Pearl turns to look at her, mouth agape. "We - we can't bring her with us! She _clearly_ has ulterior motives!" Great minds think alike, Lapis supposes.

She ignores her and steps forward, holding her hand out. "Welcome to the team."

"Excellent," Peridot says, her eyes glittering, briefly, with triumph as she takes the proffered hand.

"Wha - but -" Pearl splutters, eyes darting from Lapis to Peridot and back again, the blue clouded over with incomprehension.

"I'll explain later," Lapis leans over and whispers in her ear. "Just trust me. I know her. I know what I'm doing." She breaks away from Pearl's personal space and watches closely as Peridot walks off to unsnag a backpack from one of the tree branches.

"If you say so," Pearl says, in a low, muddled voice.

Pearl and Lapis gather the bags they'd set down as Peridot secures the backpack over her shoulders. And, as smoothly as it possibly could have gone, without a mere acknowledgment for the fact that their enemy has just seamlessly assimilated herself into their plan: they're on their way again.

It's all kind of surreal.

Lapis can't say that she minds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaand that concludes part one !!
> 
> the _real_ journey begins next chapter ;)


	9. Chapter 9

**_ _ **

**_Part Two of Three_**   

"What a lovely picture," Peridot says. "Really, Lazuli, you've outdone yourself. This is extremely helpful. Very cohesive. A true masterpiece of a roadmap."

"I'd like to see you draw a map in thin air."

Raised above them is a map illustrated with numerous ropes of water. Pearl would like to describe what the map depicts, but given the transparent nature of water, the map is very clear, and thus what it portrays is very unclear.

Lapis lets her arms drop, and her water showers down with them.

"Why don't we simply draw it out?" Pearl suggests. "Without magic?"

"Who cares?" Peridot says, pushing herself off the low-lying branch she had been laying across. She subtly wobbles for balance, and her eyes dart up to ensure that her companions hadn't witnessed her episode of fallibility (they had). "Magic or no magic, we're never gonna get out of this stupid forest and we're never gonna get to the stupid bay and—and we're all going to die out here."

"Can't argue with that," Lapis says, kneeling down to retrieve a stick from the ground. The three of them form a circle as Lapis sweeps some decaying leaves aside with her foot and submerges the tip of her stick in the dirt; the top few layers of sediment are loose but everything beneath them is tenfold denser, a perfect map-drawing canvas, and Lapis orchestrates the small branch through the sandier part so as to show them this:

There is an X that Pearl assumes is meant to symbolize their dysfunctional little group's current position, and from the X emerges a line that feeds into another line at an angle that feeds into another line at an angle and so on until she reaches the apparent endpoint that she marks with an O. Between the X and the O is a zigzag of dashes that, to Pearl at least, mean absolutely nothing.

"You are terrible at drawing maps," Peridot says.

"Would you please stop insulting my map-drawing skills?"

"Lapis," Pearl begins politely. "Why don't you just _tell_ us where we're going? A vocal map, if you will."

"All right," Lapis says, lazily kicking at the dirt until her map has been smothered. "There's a village about a day or two's walk from here. Peridot and I," she says the three words with a disciplined vacant face, "passed by it on our way here, but not through it, so I can't say for sure what's inside. Nonetheless, I assume that we can stop somewhere and eat, replenish our supplies, rest at an inn, all that. I can lead the way there."

"You say that as if _I_ can't lead the way. I passed by it too."

"True," Lapis replies, "but if I recall correctly, the last time I let you lead anything, we ended up in dragon hornet territory. You were limping from stings for a day afterwards, were you not?"

"That's only because you wouldn't give me any water!" Peridot snaps. "You are a water _witch_ and you wouldn't give me any water! It was a crime against humanity, I tell you! I could have _dehydrated to death!"_

"It's not my fault that the single cure for dragon hornet stings also just so happens to be a necessary life-sustaining liquid. I had a lesson that I needed to teach you."

"Girls, please," Pearl attempts to placate. "Lapis, lead the way. And Peridot..." She isn't particularly willing to cooperate with Peridot herself, but until she can decipher the ulterior motives and figure the mechanics of her character in detail, enough so that she can use the knowledge to stop Peridot in her tracks when the time comes, she reasons that it's easier to play nice with her for now. "If you have anything to add along the journey, you may do so. Now, shall we be on our way?"

"And why should I follow orders from the likes of _you?"_ Peridot sneers.

"Don't forget who's outnumbered between the three of us," Lapis says, but her back is already turned to them, and she's started to walk back into the dim evergreen depths of the forest. Peridot mutters acidly to herself put follows suit alongside Pearl. The air is tainted with a thin concentration of static electricity, and the hair on Pearl's arms and the back of her neck stand.

As the trio weaves around tree trunks and bushery and other such flora, Pearl catalogues a blur of movement in her upper peripheral vision; she follows it, and while the source of the commotion isn't a liege of Diamond soldiers readying for ambush like she may or may not have been secretly fearing, she finds that she's unnerved anyhow. It's an owl, with fluffed lavender feathers that fluff further as it shakes itself with a ripple that pulses ruffles from head to tail. It cocks its head at her in the owlish way that owls cock their heads, blinks, and coos. The gaze that it holds is familiar to her in a way she can't place, but it makes her hair stand up straighter still.

The owl takes flight, and her skin begins to smooth itself of the goosebumps.

The sun is beginning to set, and white clouds form silken wisps against a tangerine sky. The group discusses possible resting arrangements for the night. Pearl hates the idea of falling asleep with Peridot anywhere in her radius, and she can tell that Lapis feels at least a sliver of the same sentiment based on her expressed unease when the idea is brought up, and they end up indirectly resolving this problem by suggesting that at least two of them keep watch at a time while another rests. For, you know, Diamond reasons, Lapis reasons. One is a weak and vulnerable number, but for all three to stay awake throughout the night is impossible for obvious reasons.

While they're erecting camp in a clearing they come across, the bird comes back, and it's while Pearl is driving a particularly stubborn wooden nail into the ground that she finally realizes what it is about the avian that's got her nerves dancing.

"Are you all right, Pearl? You look like you've seen a ghost," Lapis pauses to say, rising from where she's just wrestled some fabric beneath the piercing dominion of another nail. Peridot is...well, Pearl thinks that she might be trying to help, but she's not very good at helping. She's in the back hammering wood into the ground unnecessarily, as there is no tent material before her that she's using the nail to tack to the dirt.

"I'm all right, yes. Thank you for asking."

Lapis eyes her incredulously, but doesn't say anything, and then re-wipes her face of all emotion and sets back to her work.

Pearl watches her for a moment, then clears her throat. "On second thought, I...think I could use a drink of water." She glances at the owl, which is a mistake, because when she tries to pull her gaze away, it wants to stick. "I think I'm starting to feel rather light-headed. Would you mind if I took a break?"

"No," Lapis says, setting down her pike and bending down into the tent to go rummaging through one of their bags. She returns with a silver water bottle. An unpaired wing of water uncurls outward from her back, and Lapis dips the bottle inside, then uses her other hand to screw the cap on. She hands the bottle, dotted with beads of water, to Pearl, and says, "It's clean water, don't worry. Magically enhanced, in fact. It's the best-tasting water you'll ever drink."

Pearl gives her a quiet thank you and ducks into the surrounding brushery, taking an absentminded sip from the bottle in her hand (Lapis was right; it does taste good). She sits herself down on the miniature plateau of a lone boulder and waits.

The owl joins her soon afterwards in a flurry of wingbeats, talons outstretched as it alights onto a thin tree branch beside her.

"I thought for sure I'd never see you again," Pearl says matter-of-factly, scraping at some dirt encrusted beneath a fingernail in a vain attempt at cleaning it. "Is this where you've been? All this time?"

The owl wiggles the bases of its folded wings in what Pearl can only presume is the closest approximation it can make to a shrug. "Eh, more or less. I get around, but somehow I always end up back here. Here's the real question: what the hell are _you_ doing here? You didn't, like, come here looking for me to bring me back, did you? Because, man, if that's the case, you're gonna be sorely disappointed."

Pearl laughs, and the laugh is drained of any mirth. "No, no, nothing like that, I promise. In fact, I'm just as surprised to see you as you are to see me." Quieter: "You've missed so, so much, Amethyst."

"Yeah," Amethyst says, turning her head to the side so she doesn't have to meet Pearl's eyes. "I, uh, kinda got that. Once this forest here went all _la vie en rose._ " She shifts uncomfortably on her branch, balancing on one leg so she can stretch out one set of toes, and then doing the same on her other leg. "How. How are you doing with that?"

"Not well," Pearl replies, staring at her hands, which she's folded in her lap. "Not well at all. I'd like to think that I'm putting up a nice front, though."

"Don't we all," Amethyst snorts. There's a sound like rustling wings and now there are two women on the rock, one folded in on herself delicately, the other with her legs splayed out, leaned back with her weight supported on the arms she has set behind her. With the latter, a curtain of wild, voluminous lavender hair reaches far enough down so part of it rests on the rock, and half-curls frame her face, the pastel contrasting the dark skin in a way Pearl has to admit is attractive in an alluring, aesthetic way. If she's ever realized this before now, she'd been too young to take proper note of it, or she'd been too enamored by pink hair, not purple.

"Pearl," Amethyst says, seriously, serious in a way that is uncharacteristic, based off of what Pearl remembers of her. Perhaps age has sobered her. "Really. Why are you here?"

Pearl tells her. Call it nostalgia or heat of the moment or whatever you want to call it, but she tells her _everything._

"Wow, uh, damn," Amethyst says. "The Quartz Kingdom had an adventure in store after all, huh?"

"If you'd been rational enough to stay, you would have realized. Marvelous things have happened since your disappearance. We got a charter passed forcing more freedom for the nobility, you know."

"Too little too late." An unseen cloud moves, and a pink-citrus beam of sunset sunshine filters through the canopy of forestry, and Amethyst tilts her head back and closes her eyes so her face can absorb the little warmth. "So. Anyways. Those two with you."

"Lapis isn't bad," Pearl says. "Her side shift seems genuine, and she has yet to betray my trust. Peridot, on the other hand..."

"Dude. She kidnapped you. She emotionally manipulated you into giving her information you never wanted to give her. It's no fucking _wonder_ you don't trust her. Why the hell is she with you in the first place?"

"Believe me, I'm no less suspicious than you. But Lapis knows her better than I do, and she seems to have it under control."

"And who's to say you can completely trust Lapis? She's been on your side for, what, two days? She's Diamond _,_ Pearl."

Pearl's eyes float lifelessly back to her entwined fingers. She presses her thumbs together. "What else can I do, Amethyst?" she asks, voice barely transcending a whisper. "What else can I _do?_ I've lost _everything."_

"Hey, I've been there. Would it make you feel any better if I told you that it can only get better from here, even if that's a total bullshit life theory in the long run?"

"...No."

"Well, it does. Especially when you learn to just, y'know. Let go _._ And you know what you _can_ do? You can let me—"

"Pearl?" says Lapis' voice, and there's the irrefutable sound of someone clearing a path through thick foliage with their hands. "Are you—oh." Lapis stands before them. The tree branches she'd manipulated aside snap back into their original positions. "Um."

* * *

 

"An old friend, hm?" Peridot says. "You can't even be bothered to go into more detail than that?"

"That's all you need," Pearl rebuts. "We let _you,"_ she says the word like there's acid iced on her lips, "on the team without any major justification, did we not? After allowing you to join, after all you've done to us, one would think that we'd let someone I actually _trust_ on our side too." Well. 'Trust,' to a certain extent. It's all very confusing. It had all become even more confusing when Amethyst had asked to join their quest after vanishing from Pearl's life for, oh, how many years?

"What I was _going_ to say before Lapis here interrupted me, was, uh—how's about I join your little adventure here?" she'd said. "For, you know, no reason in particular, because as human beings it's totally not like every action we take and every thing we say is dominated by some kind of motivation to do so, right? Am I right?"

Pearl thinks that this is okay. If Amethyst doesn't want to spill all her angst right now at this very moment, who are they to force her?

(Plus, maybe she misses her.)

"Pearl isn't wrong," Lapis is saying now. "We can use all the help we can get, and it seems to me like this girl has come credible backstory to her, if she's been friends with Pearl in the past." Amethyst gives a stage bow at this.

Lapis and Peridot have a staring contest that Lapis eventually emerges from dominant and Peridot, defeated, marches off muttering into the tent, sounding extraordinarily like a five-year-old denied a candy.

"Well," Lapis says, crossing her arms as the remaining trio watches Peridot zip up the tent and zip herself away from the outside world. "I guess we should probably re-think those sleeping arrangements."


End file.
